Slug Guts - Playin' in Time with the Deadbeat

I picked to listed to Australia's Slug Guts today based almost on awesome name only. That, and I was so bored with Gaslight Anthem's last record that I didn't care about hearing their new one. And based on the opening track, "Scum", I am totally okay with my decision.

The opener is basically a simple riff plugged over a drummer who loves the trash can-sounding china cymbal. And a singer who is equal parts Alice Cooper and Al Jourgenson. Other songs up the musicality of the rest of the band to varying degrees. The garage band licks and distorted vocal over double whatever echo you're normally use to hearing in noise rock bands.

 

Altogether, there probably isn't enough dynamics in Slug Guts' sound to garner any attention. Here and there. There is a "Rump Shaker"-like sax solo in "Moving Heat". And while "garage" is a good sound, it can be limiting. And the title track feels a little too close to the garage classic, "Li'l Red Riding Hood".

As a word-guy, the vocals get my goat on this record more than anything. He's got the Jon Spencer hoots and hollers down. But they are so very muddled underneath everything else and an additional layer of echo distortion. I could make out "This is what you want/This is what you get" being repeated over and over in "Order Of Death"- but that was the only thing intelligible throughout.

I like their sound in general, but they're not ready for albums yet. They need to start playin' in time with a producer. (2 of 5 stars)

Frank Ocean - Channel Orange

Frank Ocean has been a songwriter for the biggest names in pop. R. Kelly not being one of them, but I bring him up because I hear a lot of R's conversational style in Frank's songs. Certainly not the gangsta-smoove attitude, but the flow of the words and the lack of the traditional verse-chorus-verse structure. Frank Ocean is not your typical rhythm and bluesman.

Indie R&B ?

While a transplant in Los Angeles from his native New Orleans, the themes here are all California Dreamin'. Not that I want to paint a hippie-dippie picture of the songs here at all. Frank pretty much regrets everything that's ever happened to him. But he laments uniquely.

"Sweet Life" has him describing the life of an upscale protagonist who apparently can't see the forest for the trees. "You’ve had a landscaper and a housekeeper since you were born / So why see the world when you got the beach" He can be interestingly descriptive in a unfamiliar way when the main point is still the pop truisms of: I love you, I miss you, I dream for something better.

And frankly (pun not intended) some of this kept me from connecting fully with the songs. "Crack Rock" is a fantastic mellow jazz party, but what do I know of smoking crack and killing cops. Songs about parties at mansions in the Hills and stage diving Dalai Lamas. It's certainly clever and performed well, but there's a reason I dubbed it "indie" before.

I did get to be wow'ed before the album ended with a couple of tracks. "Bad Religion" which gets to mourn unrequited love in the back of a cab. And "Pink Matter" which I may have dismissed for its philosophical musings with Sensei. That is until Andre 3000 comes out of nowhere to rhyme a perfect interlude.

Frank is going to get great accolades... and not just for his open letters. He's a unique voice in R&B. I would certainly like to see him mix his lyrical ambition with something more stylized on the musical side than the spare production that he gave here. But he'll have a big future... or he'll go the way of Cody ChesnuTT. (3 of 5 stars)

Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan

Dirty Projectors are a Brooklyn hipster band with a plethora of recorded history behind them as well as a city population of previous members. My sights on them have always been diverted from my prejudice against the hype (and their silly name). Gotta say... I'm kicking myself for letting this pass me by but am also excited to know that the discovery period doesn't have to end very soon. This, y'all, is a great record.

I'll kick it off with my first exposure, a song called "Gun Has No Trigger". And as odd as it is, is still one of the most commercial of all of the songs. With its vocal background, it's almost completely a capella. But as the bridge moves into the chorus, it stays simple and small but is still somehow huge and swooping.




The most-oft singer, Dave Longstreth, follows a path of many indie rock bands. Some go overtly cutesy, the others go his way. He probably has no real control over his own voice and compensates by maneuvering to absurd melodies that serve to contrast the music underneath. This would be an insult if the music underneath was trying to be astute, straight ahead, rock or pop. But it's not.

The music underneath is just as adventurous. Mostly on the rhythm front. While listening for 15 seconds, you might hear just *mess*. But in reality, the songs have verses that move to bridges that move to choruses. And when you get to each section, you know you're there. It's just that you're not getting that 4/4 backbeat to make you Soul Train as easy to rock down the runway. "See What She Seeing" is a perfect example of this. While over one of this crazy beats, the first verse gets to run over a bent & flattened guitar riff. Same riff in the second verse, but this time is performed by a delicate string ensemble.

And even if the rhythm and melodies are odd and fight the average listener, the songs are still classically written. The themes are still love, loss, disappointment, desire. There's a lot going here. It's almost overwhelming. But it works. (4 of 5 stars)

"I ran across cyanide plains

Mind like a prison cell
But feet untethered and sane

I wandered out hopeless and sad
No thought of where I'd go
Or how I'd ever get back

There is an answer
I haven't found it
But I will keep dancing till I do"

Stevie Jackson - (I Can't Get No) Stevie Jackson

Stevie is a member of Belle & Sebastian, a Scottish indie-pop group that I know by reputation without ever having listened to them. This is his first solo album. It runs the gamut of indie pop clichés. Very wordy, crisp-clean production, lots of references to other beloved musical memories and a strong influence of one of two classics. In Stevie's case, he is channeling the Beach Boys more often than not.

In comparison, a similarly indie pop release from a few years ago by Canadian band Sloan chose the Beatles as their fave muse. If you're not reminiscing either of those two bands, then either you're not indie pop or, congratulations, you're not so cliché. I loved Sloan's record, even if it did feel like Abbey Road II,  and was not as big a fan of this.

Most of it is Stevie's voice, which sounds like Glenn Tilbrook was trying to be especially overtly cutesy. Like he's doing an impression of a kid. That's a personal taste thing, but for this tight of a production where your vocals are so ahead of the mix, I would rather you have balls. "Try Me"  is a great example of this. What could have been a raucous send up of Elvis Costello instead sounds too precious. Like the Wiggles were really letting loose.

Lyrically, Stevie is also entirely too cutesy. He includes two different songs about the teenage pitter-pat of the heart when deciding to express your feelings to a girl. One via telephone. The other via E-mail. And like I said, he throws out more references than Okkervil River or The Hold Steady on their best days. Shouting out the Beatles a couple of times, Love Unlimited, Gamble And Huff. Even the album title is a Rolling Stones quip.

The Beach-Boys-instrumentation efforts are actually the most valuable part of the record. Jackson can clearly construct a song. I just wish he'd have collaborated with a different singer-songwriter than doing his own album. (2 of 5 stars)