Vetiver - The Errant Charm

Named after the place where camels shit, Vetiver is a folk rock group from San Francisco who have been around a few years. This is their second album for Sub Pop. ...and sounds like nothing that which I grew up remembering Sub Pop bands sounding like.

Which is okay by definition; but by and large Vetiver are not my cup of tea. For example, the opener, "It's Beyond Me" is a good enough California dreamscape wave of mellowness, but then it spends two minutes at the end droning on like they forgot they were still plugged in.

I'm not sure when this Fleet-Foxy trend started occurring, but Vetiver is acheiving only polish here, not originality. "Hard To Break", for example is merely a reworking of Gerry Rafferty's "Right Down The Line". Nor do they have the vocal prowess to handle FF's type-of harmony. It also sounds just like it's pretending to be organic. If the percussion here's isn't completely digital I'll be shocked.

I'm posting the official video, the best track, which is an uncharacteristically upbeat track from the record. Enjoy, but don't be fooled. (1.5 of 5 stars)

Arctic Monkeys - Suck It And See

After having their opium freak-out a couple years ago with Josh Homme on Humbug, the Sheffield speed freaks are back with a new one just in time for the summer festival circuit. It has opening track which feels like a hug opening number from an outdoor live set. "She's Thunderstorms" also speaks of that hugely influential impenetrable girl. And with a line like, "She does what the night does to the day"; it's going to be favorite among the panty droppers in the crowd.

And after a lazily executed "Black Treacle"; comes a slipshod frat-guy bullshit song called "Brick By Brick". It couldn't be any more obvious if they had just covered, "I Wanna Be Your Dog". "I wanna steal your soul / I wanna rock and roll / I wanna feel your love". It's unbecoming of the otherwise outer-worldy wordsmithing of Alex Turner. Fuck that shit. The next track doesn't help. "The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala" is just a fangled-fancy way of titling your song out of your insipid "Shalalala" chorus. That's all it fucking is.

A saving grace is the first proper single, "Don't Sit Down 'Cause I've Moved Your Chair". A straight-up desert-groove homage to their prior producer, Josh Homme. And say what you will about the Beck-like non-sensicalisms of "Library Pictures"; but it fucking rocks.

We move on through a couple more mid-tempo songs which are fine, if unremarkable, like the awesomely-titled title track. It's decent pop, but not great AM. But we are brought to a standout romantic ballad. Surprisingly not as pandering as the rockers on the album; "Love is a Laserquest" holds up with other sentimental Monkey favorites like "Cornerstone" and "Only Ones Who Know".

It's not the psychedelic tones replacing the pub-rock that has me irked. God knows, I love Queens. But the sentimental slow stuff used to augment the snotty rockers. And we don't get any of that attitude here. Don't get me wrong, the great tunes on here are GREAT. But there's far too many cross-over appealing tracks to be able to pump my anti-Coldplay fist with Alex et. al.

I sucked it and saw. It's a C. (3 of 5 stars)

Eddie Vedder - Ukulele Songs

The title does not lie. 16 songs sung by Eddie with little to no accompaniment; little help from guest performers. Most are originals. Some covers. But as Eddie sings alone, this feels like "alone" music. I suppose like all ukulele music. Without the benefit of a Hawaiian shore to walk barefoot down, I'll settle for a front porch in the rain.

The romanticism of being alone. An emotion perfectly expressed throughout this collection. An angsty opening track aside, these tunes are mostly romantic love-lost songs. "Broken Heart", "Goodbye", "Without You"; the song list goes on. It's simple. Songs about love generally are. And everytime I think I'm going to tire of this same uke-style song after song, Eddie hits some minor chord and I'm immediately back in.

While I've always been a Pearl Jam fan, I cannot immediately say why I love this record so much more than his last solo effort. But when I get the words, I'll come back and revisit- as I'm sure I'll be listening to Ukulele Songs a lot. (5 of 5 stars)

White Denim - D

I had just happened to have listened to a previous White Denim album after a local radio station played "I Start To Run" a couple of times. I had no idea that they would have a new album this week. A Black Keys comparison would seem way off to you, but White Denim are garagey and singer James Petralli has an Auerbach kind of voice if Dan were on psychedelics and speed at the same time.

But let's be clear, it's not blues-rock. It's avant-garde psychedelic jazz rock. There's little riffing going on. It's spaced-out lead fills with a very jazzy bass player and odd-time signatures. But it was still raw and rock-y to me.

"D" is more levelled than that. The vocals are more controlled. The songs are less rock-club sounding than they are studio-crafting. "At The Farm" sounds downright Phishy. "Street Joy" sounds like My Morning Jacket are covering Pink Floyd. Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to paint a derivative picture. But it's clear the band is maturing... which is leaving me a little on the side of disappointed. Even though, the album is still clearly good. Progressive even. What keeps them from touring with Dream Theater is just amplification at some point.

Okay, wait- is that jazz flute? Okay, White Denim have completely jumped out of the jammy rock band pool and into full on hippies. "D" has none of the fluid post-punkiness of "Fits". This is for a different audience that doesn't fuck as much. It's a drag to say for something so theorhetically sound, but it's simply less fun. (2 of 5 stars)

Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi - Rome

An album inspired by spaghetti westerns may sound as cheeseball as many spaghetti westerns were. And while I didn't know anything about Luppi going into this listen, I do know quite a bit about Danger Mouse. He's certainly a guy who take an inspiration and turn it into something true. Like a musical Tarantino.

Which is a good analogy, really. The music has a perfectly visual feel. And while the interludes sometimes feel like filler; an instrumental like "Roman Blue" is perfectly paced and would create the same awesome no-talking moments at your dinner party that some Beastie Boys' funk jams provide.

Of the guest vocalists; it's a pleasure that they don't try to belabour some common lyrical theme to match the film-score feel. All the songs stand on their own. Jack White and Norah Jones, while never duetting, each provide an emotive story and fit each performance matching the mellow landscape that is painted by the music. (3.5 of 5 starts)

Okkervil River - I Am Very Far

As I have discussed here before, I've always liked Okkervil River based on the constant literary expression... Will is very wordy. It's a rare band under the folk-rock banner that pass through my headphones. So I have expectations on this record.

The album starts out with "The Valley", an epic tale that feels like it could have been inspired by the Decemberists' "Hazards Of Love". Others like this include "White Shadow Waltz" where Will seems to be be trading his lyricism of painting celebratory anthems (almost) to a darker story-telling imagery. The wordplay, while impressive, finds the listener (re: me) with less to relate to.

There are also some experimental jaunts musically, where the band expands beyond the singer-songwriter form. This includes "Piretess" as a foray into Roxy Music soul - and "Show Yourself"; which I assume they were going for Radiohead, but happens to sound more like Dave Matthews. The single, "Wake And Be Fine" strays farther into the Arcade Fire- big number band member thing. Farther than I am comfortable with. Hopefully, it will garner them a hit, but that sound is not generaly their forte - even if Will's lyrics are more bookish than ever.

"Rider" is a return to form and hooks me with the line:

I fly out on my silver, scissoring wings
With the other sardines
Over cities of things mommies need
Light as gas, and half-assedly free
Like I was in nineteen ninety three

And before I can finish writing the sentence that it's going to be hard to top "We Need A Myth" for "Best Song of 2011" award, we get to "Hanging From A Hit". With its Beach Boys meets Phil Spector perfection of orchestral build-and-recede, Sheff produces a heartbreaking account of lovers with a wall between them.

A day she spends the night
And I can hear her sighing
As she's almost asleep on one side
I lie back on my pillow
And ask what her husband is like

(3.5 of 5 stars)

Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee Part Two

I realize that this is a long-anticipated, highly sought-after seven-year follow up to the BBs last new release. I further realize that we almost lost a good man to cancer and that this should be the feel good triumph of the year with Yauch, already a positively outlooking Buddhist, being even further exasperated by life.

Trouble is... the record's just not that good.

Maybe I got myself spoiled on the live calypso-funk jamming of Paul's Boutique / Check Your Head and the rock of Ill Communication. Seriously, where is Caldato these days?

Hot Sauce just picks up where they've been since then. Hello Nasty / 5 Burroughs regressed all lyrical content to hip-hop boasting. All of it. And the rhyme's are not without merit, it's just after three albums, it's like- I get it. You like your style of rapping more than any other rappers'. I know that they have the ability to conquer more. It does not bode well for the three that my favorite track on the album is the instrumental.



"OK" is easily the worst song in the BB catalog since "Girls". And there's simply a LOT of filler. Unrealized song fragments. "Funky Donkey" "The Larry Routine" "Crazy Ass Shit" and they even close with a bullshit 1:30 tune that declares quite emphatically that they "Get down Grade A ground round."

The beats too, are not awful, just mostly electronic humdrum. Less, "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun"; more "Intergalactic". I think what they do well, rhyming, comes easy to them. But that eclecticism that paved their return from backlash of their debut is lost again. Maybe their content with that. (2 of 5 stars)