Veckatimest
Grizzly Bear
There's something sinister about the way the drummer for Grizzly Bear plays. I'm not referring to the way he looks - I've never seen him. But there is something alternately robotic and primordial about his approach. It's distinctly not human - in fact, I'd be impressed but not surprised if drummer Christopher Bear was an actual fucking grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis in scientific terms). Hey, if they can dance and play with those little red balls, they can probably hit the drums with those paws. Okay, so that's a pretty crazy idea, but I swear it's the kind of stuff I think of when I listen to these guys. Hauntingly beautiful, like a natural vista of forest and mountain ranges, you might not realize how much you like this music until long after you first hear it.
Superficial Gossip
Ringo Shiina
In Japan, I get the feeling that even the more popular singer/songwriters feel less constrained by genre and era than they do in the U.S. and EU countries. Despite being one of the top female pop musicians/icons in her country, Ringo Shiina leaps across and between genre boundaries as often as the most experimental groups here. Shiina is so famous and renowned in her home country that, at the ripe old age of 30, she has already received an award from the Japanese goverment for her work. On this album, she moves comfortably from soul/R&B to funk to jazz to 50's musical to modern rock and electro - and she succeeds on all fronts, crafting an album so catchy and so unpredictable that I bet Mike Patton would kill to have made this. Awesome.
Carboniferous
Zu
Remember the band Morphine? Imagine if, after Mark Sandman died, they hired a new bass player and changed their sound to all-instrumental math-metal (a la Meshuggah) and made a ton of records in Italy, before signing to Ipecac and getting Mike Patton to do some guest vocals. That's pretty much how this sounds. Um, did I mention that it's awesome? Yeah, it is.
Le Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini
Secret Chiefs 3 (as Traditionalists)
Trey Spruance is the kind of genius I can never get enough of. He and his group of ridiulously talented musicians, the Secret Chiefs 3, are so multifaceted in the sheer number of genres they're capable of tackling that they've had to subdivide themselves into fictional "satellite bands" that specialize in particular sub-categories of music. In this case, we have one of the satellite bands, Traditionalists, making an album-length soundtrack to an imaginary Italian thriller/horror film. It's of course unbelievably amazing and well worth your time and $$$ - I just wish the film was real.
Wavering Radiant
Isis
Just putting out a new album automatically gets Isis a place on my "best of" list - all they have to do is not fuck it up, which they never do, so this one is pretty much a no-brainer for me. For those who don't know, Isis is pretty much the quintessential post-metal band, even though no one's exactly sure what post-metal is (hint: take sludge/doom metal, add keyboards - for atmosphere, not for virtuosic displays or solos - and long instrumental passages [some bands don't even have a vocalist], and you're pretty close). For those who do know the band, the question with regard to Isis is probably always going to be, "Is it as good as Oceanic?" The correct answer to that question will likewise always be: who cares? Oceanic is a great album but Isis have better things to do than satisfy fans of that album by making endless sequels to it. If you love Isis and want to hear something new from them, Wavering Radiant doesn't disappoint.
Black Clouds & Silver Linings
Dream Theater
Thank god for prog-metal. No need to worry whether or not I'm a dork for liking Dream Theater. I *know* I am. There are more chops on display on a single DT track than most bands ever use in their entire career. It's refreshing to me to hear a band that doesn't hold back - these guys know how to play the fuck out of their instruments and they're not afraid of doing so. As usual there are a lot of lengthy tracks here with lots of contrasting sections - if you don't like 20-minute-long songs, don't bother with this one - actually, don't bother with prog, period.
Octahedron
The Mars Volta
I have noticed a tendency for Cedric Bixler-Zavala to parody certain stock phrases in his lyrics as a way of saying something familiar/catchy while subverting cliche. So, for example, "Since we've been wrong" subverts the usual "since you've been gone." That's just one reason I dig The Mars Volta. Another one, of course, is composer/guitarist/multi-instrumentalist/mastermind Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's amazing musical gifts. This time around we get a bit more slow, melodic stuff, but if you're thinking this is a bid for mainstream success, how do you explain titles like "A Halo of Nembutals," and lyrics like "What a foul little temptress/your daughter's become"? And that's just one of the rare lines that doesn't sound like someone narrating their all-time worst acid trip. These guys are my favorite maniacs.
Middle Cyclone
Neko Case
I haven't heard any writer personify a tornado until Neko Case did it with the lead track on this album. "This Tornado Loves You" is one of the strangest love songs I've ever heard, but it's no less emotional for that. A lot of Neko's songs are like that - strange, yet strangely touching. All kinds of odd characters seem to inhabit the songs on this album, including birds, prison girls, and (I think) Sorrow. In "The Magpie To The Morning," besides the titular bird, there's also a mockingbird and a vulture, which "wheels and dives/Something on the thermals yanked his chain/He smelled your boring apex/Rotting on the train tracks/He laughed under his breath/Because you thought that you could outrun sorrow". On "Fever," Neko herself seems to be running from Death, whose "peculiar" songs she overhears. When he finally hears her "tiny heartbeat," he gives chase: "I heard him coming/shrapnel spitting from his wheels/His scything arms rake for my heels". Damn.
No comments:
Post a Comment