Saturday, July 25, 2009

Magnolia Electric Co. - Josephine

Jason Molina releases his first album in a few years, and it is pretty much what you would expect. It's alt. country with soothing piano, slide acoustic and pedal steel guitar. The songs are about loneliness, sentimentality and peaceful breezy weather.

Other than that, there's not much else to tell. If you're familiar with Jason's past work, this will be familiar territory. You'll have your favorites and the rest of it will still sound good to you. I think it helped that I'm listening to it with the windows open on a nice mild summer day. The wind is blowing at me and the lawns are freshly cut.

The album is also fairly short. 14 songs at 45 minutes. Doing the math, that's an average of over three minutes per song. That means that the songs aren't belabored over. They come in, tell the story and move out. I just wished I had the patience to move so slowly for the full duration. (2.5/5 stars)

Saturday, July 18, 2009

The Dead Weather - Horehound

Being a big Jack White fan, I had to check out this new release. I admire his versatility and in the end, his songwriting skills. As Jack is taking more of a backseat on this release, focusing primarily on drums, I expect to like it proportionately.

First of all, I must make an up-front admission, as I am somewhat of a musical sexist. Eh- let's be honest, I'm an all-around sexist. But when it comes to chick singers, I just don't connect as well. If I'm trying to find something to connect to, sometimes chicks take away my ability to relate and I feel like I'm just another person watching. I dunno, but there's my disclaimer.

This album is definitely more of a jam than the tight songs of recent White Stripes or the harmony laced Raconteurs. It's deeper, swampier. The opener, "60 Feet Tall" and the instrumental, "3 Birds" even sounds like they're still trying to figure out the structure while playing it.

Jack is approaching the drums like he often approaches the guitar. With riffs. The beat that introduces "Hang You from the Heavens" is as awesome as the "The Rover" that inspired it. See below.

Oddly, being a Jack White fan, "I Cut Like A Buffalo", the one song that he wrote alone and sang is probably my least favorite.

As proven in the past, Jack loves his Dylan. This time, covering one of my favorites, "New Pony". DW jams it in their darker rock style, but those of us familiar with Dylan's street preacher swagger original will find this one a bit inferior.

In the end, the band cranks the Orange amplifiers, stomps the fuzz box and does a good job bringing a barn in Nashville to a dark bar in Detroit. My prejudice absolutely got the best of me, in the sense that while Alison's vocals are sometimes sexy, it rarely matches the dark passion that the fellas seem to be wanting to project. And the lyrics are too disjointed and vague to play a hand in keeping us grabbed. (3/5 stars)

Saturday, July 11, 2009

We Were Promised Jetpacks - These Four Walls

Great name for a band. As I saw that and the category "Indie Rock", I knew I had my album of the week. As I dove into the first song, "It's Thunder And It's Lightning", I started to feel really satisfied with my choice. Started with a pretty typical indie rock riff. Felt very New-York, like Les Savy Fav for example. Except for the vocals. WWPJ are a Scottish band and that becomes all too evident with Adam Thompson's unapologetically thick Scottish accent. He sang strongly over the riff as the song crescendoed to something a little more feverish. A procedure that when employed like this reminded me a little of U2.

A then I realized that that was it. The same structure for their first song is almost exactly repeated on virtually every other song on the record. Starts out with a riff that is based on plucking two different notes of a chord one after the other. Drums kick in. Singer begins. Song swells, plucking turns into full chords, big jam on that chord for last minute of song. While most come in at an acceptable amount of time, the next-to-last track, "Keeping Warm" employs this structure over an eight minute time frame. And the last track, "An Almighty Thud" uses the same riffage, just on acoustic. The lyrics here about failure and fear seem interesting, but the song takes a minute too long while the guitarist jams some simple chord when it's not needed or earned.

Which is going to be the final thought for this record. Great name aside, this band has some growing to do and is, at this moment, not needed.
(2.5 of 5 stars)

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Killswitch Engage

A friend of mine who is a huge Killswitch fan called this record a horrible piece of shit. But he did so in a descriptive way that told me that I might like it. If these extreme metallers were going to chill it down and get all mopey and heart-breaky, then my ears might find a connection.

For starters, they got Brendan O'Brien as a producer. If anything screams "We're trying to cross-over to a wider audience!", it's getting B O'B as your producer. Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, Rage ATM, KoRn, Incubus. This is a guy who gets shit onto modern-alterno-rock radio.

The production is evident right away. First track, "Never Again" (no- not a Kelly Clarkson cover) The verse is a razorblade-vocal screamfest & the chorus is repetitive, simple, and melodic. The video has prettier people in it than the band. Slipknot employs this tactic a shit-ton, and it's safe to say that they're way more successful. I'll bet that KSE is trying to find a common audience tangent.

To my friend's credit, he may have a point. If he is upset that the singer has employed some new relationship woes into his songwriting, then he's got very little to be satisfied with here. There are several examples of some cliché trite bullshit.

Can we start again?/We thought love was everlasting
- "Starting Over"

I've made so many mistakes and I've broken so many promises
I've searched inside and I'm empty/Will you save me?

- "Save Me"

Drifting from your memory/I'm lost without your love
- "Lost"

While the band makes room for those big choruses, for the rest of the time, they are working the room full of Iron Maiden riffs with flair. The single throws down an obvious tween-girl sing-along slow breakdown part. See video below.

So what can my friend expect? Either these tactics will be successful, meaning that future albums will employ the same on at least half the songs, and his enjoyment will be wained forever. Or it will fail, the band will go broke under the huge production costs, keep trying, but will grow more cynical as "the scene" changes, and will ultimately break-up. My advice to my friend.... at least you got 4 albums that you liked... (2/5 stars)