News Analysis
Agenda
October 18, 2010
Link (subscription required)
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Darren Hanlon - I Will Love You at All
Album Review
Pitchfork
October 21, 2010
Link
7.6
Pitchfork
October 21, 2010
Link
7.6
If you're a fan of painstaking songcraft, there's a good chance you've brushed across Darren Hanlon's name before. The avuncular Australian came up in the 1990s as a member of the Simpletons and played on a bunch of recordings by much-loved countrymen the Lucksmiths. In the course of releasing three fine solo albums over the past decade, Hanlon has toured with Billy Bragg, the Magnetic Fields, and Jeffrey Lewis. With enough wry charm and vivid detail to withstand such comparisons, Hanlon's unassuming brand of indie-pop digs up the mundane or eccentric and scrapes off the dirt until he hits on something universal. Until now, however, he's never enjoyed a proper U.S. promotional push.
Each of Hanlon's albums has moments worth revisiting, but I Will Love You at All is his most consistently rewarding effort yet. Not only because, as befits the self-described "urban folk" singer's leap from Melbourne's now-defunct Candle Records to North Carolina-based Yep Roc, it's also his most American: Adam Selzer (M. Ward, She & Him, the Decemberists) recorded the album in Portland, so there's a familiarly Pacific Northwestern tint, not least in longtime Selzer collaborator Rachel Blumberg's meticulously understated drumming. What most sets Hanlon's fourth album apart from its predecessors, though, is that he's no longer singing about squash or the noisy punk-rock girl upstairs; when he shows off his tremendous wit, it's now in subtler and more lasting ways than proving he can shoehorn the word "aubergine" into a catchy song. This is a record of heartbreak, rendered richly enough that you might not notice it. It's also an immensely funny record, with enough real emotion behind it that you might not notice that, either.
It doesn't hurt that there's a lot more variety between songs than you expect from your typical heart-on-sleeve troubadour-- or, hell, from most bands in this era of tinier and tinier niches. Ukulele, euphonium, and strings enliven "All These Things", an affecting call-and-response duet with Shelley Short about the trivia that comes to define us. "Scenes From a Separation" depicts beautifully just what its title says, but with keyboards, a waltzing-Matilda rhythm and more backing vocals from both Short and Alia Farah. Opener "Butterfly Bones", about someone who injures easily, sets viola, trumpet, and hammered percussion over syncopated acoustic chords; "Buy Me Presents" rattles like the Modern Lovers' "Roadrunner" amid bongos, saxophone, and sly observations about fear of commitment. Only grandiose piano ballad "What Can We Say?" feels like a relative misstep.
As on records by anyone from Loudon Wainwright III to Jens Lekman, it's Hanlon's distinctive narrative vision that holds it all together, rewarding the attention this album requires. Nearly eight-minute centerpiece "House" isn't the album's best track-- that's "Folk Insomnia", a stripped-down jaunt about broken hearts and growing older-- but it's the best encapsulation of Hanlon's gift for funny, pathos-laden detail. There's a terrible Barenaked Ladies song called "The Old Apartment", where they do little more than state the obvious: "This is where we used to live." Here, Hanlon does just about the opposite, documenting all his idiosyncratic thoughts as he debates going into an old home, notices the wall's new color-- "the horror!"-- and finally comes to terms with the changes, in a crescendo of guitar and Blumberg's drums. Memories, Hanlon concludes, are "best if they're left in a place you can't find them." If I Will Love You at All is Hanlon's "mature" album, then maturing is less about embracing the flux than accepting it, moving on to the next misadventure, and then sharing stories about it all over beers.
Each of Hanlon's albums has moments worth revisiting, but I Will Love You at All is his most consistently rewarding effort yet. Not only because, as befits the self-described "urban folk" singer's leap from Melbourne's now-defunct Candle Records to North Carolina-based Yep Roc, it's also his most American: Adam Selzer (M. Ward, She & Him, the Decemberists) recorded the album in Portland, so there's a familiarly Pacific Northwestern tint, not least in longtime Selzer collaborator Rachel Blumberg's meticulously understated drumming. What most sets Hanlon's fourth album apart from its predecessors, though, is that he's no longer singing about squash or the noisy punk-rock girl upstairs; when he shows off his tremendous wit, it's now in subtler and more lasting ways than proving he can shoehorn the word "aubergine" into a catchy song. This is a record of heartbreak, rendered richly enough that you might not notice it. It's also an immensely funny record, with enough real emotion behind it that you might not notice that, either.
It doesn't hurt that there's a lot more variety between songs than you expect from your typical heart-on-sleeve troubadour-- or, hell, from most bands in this era of tinier and tinier niches. Ukulele, euphonium, and strings enliven "All These Things", an affecting call-and-response duet with Shelley Short about the trivia that comes to define us. "Scenes From a Separation" depicts beautifully just what its title says, but with keyboards, a waltzing-Matilda rhythm and more backing vocals from both Short and Alia Farah. Opener "Butterfly Bones", about someone who injures easily, sets viola, trumpet, and hammered percussion over syncopated acoustic chords; "Buy Me Presents" rattles like the Modern Lovers' "Roadrunner" amid bongos, saxophone, and sly observations about fear of commitment. Only grandiose piano ballad "What Can We Say?" feels like a relative misstep.
As on records by anyone from Loudon Wainwright III to Jens Lekman, it's Hanlon's distinctive narrative vision that holds it all together, rewarding the attention this album requires. Nearly eight-minute centerpiece "House" isn't the album's best track-- that's "Folk Insomnia", a stripped-down jaunt about broken hearts and growing older-- but it's the best encapsulation of Hanlon's gift for funny, pathos-laden detail. There's a terrible Barenaked Ladies song called "The Old Apartment", where they do little more than state the obvious: "This is where we used to live." Here, Hanlon does just about the opposite, documenting all his idiosyncratic thoughts as he debates going into an old home, notices the wall's new color-- "the horror!"-- and finally comes to terms with the changes, in a crescendo of guitar and Blumberg's drums. Memories, Hanlon concludes, are "best if they're left in a place you can't find them." If I Will Love You at All is Hanlon's "mature" album, then maturing is less about embracing the flux than accepting it, moving on to the next misadventure, and then sharing stories about it all over beers.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Small Black - New Chain
Album Review
SPIN
November 2010
Link
6/10
Kindest regrets from the kids at Bummer Beach
Last year’s self-titled EP from this Brooklyn quartet, then a duo, was poignant, lo-fi synth-pop sung by a wisp of a guy already worrying what would happen “when I’m gone.” Live gigs backing up Washed Out further marked Small Black as persons of interest in the chillwave scene. Their debut album, mixed by Nicolas Vernhes (Animal Collective, Cat Power), brings a sharper sound to those wobbly keyboard lines and crisp ’80s snares, but somewhat blurs their emotional impact. Still, there are enough gently pleading choruses (“Photojournalist”) and sun-baked slacker sighs (“Light Curses”) to evoke yet another deadbeat summer.
SPIN
November 2010
Link
6/10
Kindest regrets from the kids at Bummer Beach
Last year’s self-titled EP from this Brooklyn quartet, then a duo, was poignant, lo-fi synth-pop sung by a wisp of a guy already worrying what would happen “when I’m gone.” Live gigs backing up Washed Out further marked Small Black as persons of interest in the chillwave scene. Their debut album, mixed by Nicolas Vernhes (Animal Collective, Cat Power), brings a sharper sound to those wobbly keyboard lines and crisp ’80s snares, but somewhat blurs their emotional impact. Still, there are enough gently pleading choruses (“Photojournalist”) and sun-baked slacker sighs (“Light Curses”) to evoke yet another deadbeat summer.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Shrag - Life! Death! Prizes!
Album Review
Pitchfork
October 14, 2010
Link
6.8
Shrag take their name from an apartment block in their hometown of Brighton, England. According to an interview the quintet did this summer with the blog Rhubarb Bomb, one of the band members lived in a building called Sussex Heights, so their unusual moniker is really an acronym for "Sussex Heights Roving Artist Group." Not exactly the kind of thing you imagine they settled on expecting to have to market it all these years later to a wider audience. Was this Joy Division? Not at all. The Desperate Bicycles? Shampoo? Bis? Getting warmer...
Shrag's self-titled debut album was the result of a similarly haphazard process, and it turned out to be one of last year's most enjoyable indie pop releases. Scruffy, heartbroken, and genuinely communicative at a time when bands are increasingly getting by on mood or genre signifiers alone, Shrag collected some of the well-crafted, cleverly affecting singles and mp3s the band had quietly offered up in the past few years, including "Hopelessly Wasted", "Forty Five 45s", and (for those of us still too freaked out by adulthood to become parents) "Pregnancy Scene". With Life! Death! Prizes!, Shrag attempt a sophomore LP that works more like an album than a collection of singles, and they mostly succeed.
When they're doing tightly coiled pop songs that could stand beautifully on their own, the group-- now two women and three men, following former drummer Leigh-Ann's illness-related departure-- can be quite charming. Keyboard-streaked and punk-spiked, boy-girl duets "Tights in August" and "Rabbit Kids" are as catchy and upbeat as the feelings they express are confused and conflicted: "Your love is like your August tights/ It looks all right, but they're impractical tonight." Slowing it down but not turning off the distortion for "Their Stats", Life! Death! Prizes! scores another potential alternate-universe hit, a jagged, jerking anxiety attack that feels like the apt product of a time when "friendship" has become nothing but a number on a Facebook scorecard.
Like so many indie bands' second albums, though, Life! Death! Prizes! suffers just a little from having to be conceived during a year or so rather than a lifetime. The shouty "Faux-Coda" ("miraculous, still not over") and plaintive, poignant "Coda" ("It was a terrible year, though") are endearing and, production-wise, miles ahead of the band's past work, but they don't have the direct-hit impact of Shrag's "Talk to the Left" or "Mark E. Smith". They feel like, well, album tracks. That's fine-- they support the record's overall flow-- but it's still difficult for them to stand out in the crowded field of bands reminiscent of the UK's first big do-it-yourself wave. And the distinctive, much-needed female perspective on the indie scene shown in past singles like "Different Glue" is no longer much in evidence, either. Whether they were planning on it or not, Shrag deserve their own chance to reach a bigger audience, only for now, they're a slightly better singles group than albums group. Given indie pop's 7" culture and their own humble origins, it sort of suits them.
Pitchfork
October 14, 2010
Link
6.8
Shrag take their name from an apartment block in their hometown of Brighton, England. According to an interview the quintet did this summer with the blog Rhubarb Bomb, one of the band members lived in a building called Sussex Heights, so their unusual moniker is really an acronym for "Sussex Heights Roving Artist Group." Not exactly the kind of thing you imagine they settled on expecting to have to market it all these years later to a wider audience. Was this Joy Division? Not at all. The Desperate Bicycles? Shampoo? Bis? Getting warmer...
Shrag's self-titled debut album was the result of a similarly haphazard process, and it turned out to be one of last year's most enjoyable indie pop releases. Scruffy, heartbroken, and genuinely communicative at a time when bands are increasingly getting by on mood or genre signifiers alone, Shrag collected some of the well-crafted, cleverly affecting singles and mp3s the band had quietly offered up in the past few years, including "Hopelessly Wasted", "Forty Five 45s", and (for those of us still too freaked out by adulthood to become parents) "Pregnancy Scene". With Life! Death! Prizes!, Shrag attempt a sophomore LP that works more like an album than a collection of singles, and they mostly succeed.
When they're doing tightly coiled pop songs that could stand beautifully on their own, the group-- now two women and three men, following former drummer Leigh-Ann's illness-related departure-- can be quite charming. Keyboard-streaked and punk-spiked, boy-girl duets "Tights in August" and "Rabbit Kids" are as catchy and upbeat as the feelings they express are confused and conflicted: "Your love is like your August tights/ It looks all right, but they're impractical tonight." Slowing it down but not turning off the distortion for "Their Stats", Life! Death! Prizes! scores another potential alternate-universe hit, a jagged, jerking anxiety attack that feels like the apt product of a time when "friendship" has become nothing but a number on a Facebook scorecard.
Like so many indie bands' second albums, though, Life! Death! Prizes! suffers just a little from having to be conceived during a year or so rather than a lifetime. The shouty "Faux-Coda" ("miraculous, still not over") and plaintive, poignant "Coda" ("It was a terrible year, though") are endearing and, production-wise, miles ahead of the band's past work, but they don't have the direct-hit impact of Shrag's "Talk to the Left" or "Mark E. Smith". They feel like, well, album tracks. That's fine-- they support the record's overall flow-- but it's still difficult for them to stand out in the crowded field of bands reminiscent of the UK's first big do-it-yourself wave. And the distinctive, much-needed female perspective on the indie scene shown in past singles like "Different Glue" is no longer much in evidence, either. Whether they were planning on it or not, Shrag deserve their own chance to reach a bigger audience, only for now, they're a slightly better singles group than albums group. Given indie pop's 7" culture and their own humble origins, it sort of suits them.
Monday, October 11, 2010
How to Dress Well - Love Remains
Album Review
SPIN
November 2010
Link
8/10
If Bon Iver had grown up grindin’ to ’90s R&B jams
Hazy nostalgia may have been the indie world’s richest musical resource lately (Animal Collective, Deerhunter, Wild Nothing), but a long-overdue embrace of R&B has certainly been another (the xx, Dirty Projectors). As How to Dress Well, Tom Krell marries these two muses, conjuring fractured memories of Shai or TLC, mostly using his otherworldly falsetto. Also: reverb. But don’t expect the sex-intelligence quotient of The-Dream. This debut is a different kind of soul music, as meditative as it is evocative.
SPIN
November 2010
Link
8/10
If Bon Iver had grown up grindin’ to ’90s R&B jams
Hazy nostalgia may have been the indie world’s richest musical resource lately (Animal Collective, Deerhunter, Wild Nothing), but a long-overdue embrace of R&B has certainly been another (the xx, Dirty Projectors). As How to Dress Well, Tom Krell marries these two muses, conjuring fractured memories of Shai or TLC, mostly using his otherworldly falsetto. Also: reverb. But don’t expect the sex-intelligence quotient of The-Dream. This debut is a different kind of soul music, as meditative as it is evocative.
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