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The first time I put on Ceremony’s new record, Rohnert Park, I knew I’d heard it somewhere before. The promotional material told me I was supposed to be reminded of protopunk and 80s hardcore. RIYL Fucked Up, Black Flag, and the Stooges. Maybe. But that didn’t sound quite right.

Then it clicked. On Rohnert Park, Ceremony reminds me of Flipper, the San Francisco punk band that didn’t tune, played terribly and slowly, and featured irritatingly repetitive vocals. Flipper hopped on hardcore bills just to mess with the scene’s expectations. And they were awesome for it. Ceremony takes a similar approach, and this record is already dividing hardcore kids.

Rohnert Park begins with “Into the Wayside Part I” (of III) and leads directly into the first true song of the record, “Sick.” On “Sick,” vocalist Ross Farrar lists a whole bunch of stuff he’s sick of, including 20 year old bands like Cro-Mags and Black Flag (presumably because they rhyme), politics domestic and international (realism?), and even–you guessed it–sick of being sick.

“M.C.D.F.” swings awkwardly, and “Moving Principle” rails against the modern world (hate that thing). The next track, “The Doldrums (Friendly City),” is a slogging three minutes of piercing single note melodies and jangling guitars, torpedoing the momentum of the first few tracks. Later in the record, Ceremony offers the No Trend -esque “Into the Wayside II,” which forgoes lyrics in favor of a story about saving some old guy (I think), and includes an ill-advised guitar solo.

The album continues with four indistinguishable minute-and-change songs, and then, inexplicably, it gets great.

“The Pathos” and “Nigh to Life” make the most of the grinding bass tone and–for the fist time on the record–the music rises up to match the vocals. And it’s during these songs that Ceremony sounds the most comfortable. The album concludes with the final installment of “Into the Wayside,” which vocally and musically recalls mid-era Elliot Smith (I know, right?), and features a woman’s speaking voice (David Axelrod gets a shout out) and a great chorus. Ultimately, and after a minute of silence, the buzzsaw bass and pummeling drums return to close out the record.

Which brings me back to Flipper. The concept of out-punking the punks, of undermining expectations and saying “DEAL WITH IT,” is amazing. You can’t listen to Album – Generic Flipper without getting a bit of a wry, in-joke smile. And with Flipper, it’s not like they could have done better–they were really terrible at their instruments. But on Rohnert Park, it’s clear that Ceremony could have made a truly excellent album (for example, if they released the last three songs on this record as an EP). So, while it’s great to raise a middle finger to presumptions, it doesn’t necessarily make for the most enjoyable listen.

Rohnert Park is out on Bridge Nine Records.

You Are Here, the debut album from (south) Brooklyn-based Field Mouse, is just that sort of record. A lush blend of shoegaze and 90s indie rock, You Are Here is steeped in hazy harmonies, delayed guitars, and emotive strings. But the crowning achievement of the record is the voice of Rachel Browne, whose soft, pristine vocals provide a consistently impressive narration through a stylistically diverse set of songs.

“Good at Me” opens the record, and features tight drumming and memorable (read: this will get stuck in your head) guitar riffs that recall mid-era Built to Spill. Tracks like “Anomie” and “Touché” show off the band’s shoegaze acumen, and include a few of my favorite moments on the album. And on “Tracing the Map,” the band picks up the pace with a cross-country adventure, where “time taps out slowly” as the song rockets forward.

Of all the songs on You Are Here, two stand out in particular. “Dirt vs. Grass” is a perfect summertime song. A simple, swinging jam including infectious handclaps and harmonies, the track is a welcome return to the best of carefree, 90s radio. The other highlight of the record is found in “End to End,” a heart-slaying, broken-down lullaby. The Disarm-esque chorus and the syncopated vocal line get me every time, and it has quickly become my favorite song on the record.

While the album is a fantastic listen, it is not without imperfections. Tracks, including the opener, could have been better served with a warmer bass, which is at times a bit too treble-y. “Tracing the Map” lacks a heavy guitar to match the locomotive drums and strong vocal delivery. And while the production is generally immaculate, sometimes I found myself longing for a more organic tone, without the effected guitars and vocals that make up a large part of the record.

However, these minor deviations do little to take away from the album’s overall strength. You Are Here is an excellent debut and a welcome addition to this summer’s soundtrack. Now let’s go outside.

For a brief period of time in middle school, I was a riot grrrl. My friend Ben and I used to request Bikini Kill on K-ROCK (denied!), ‘surf’ the nascent internet for information about Olympia, WA, and at one point my parents even took away my Bratmobile record (denied again!). Needless to say, I still have an affinity for girl groups that slay. And Dum Dum Girls slay.

I have to admit I’ve been extraordinarily skeptical about “summer-sounding” bands of late. Perhaps after the nth time of having my low expectations met, I was over it. Or maybe it was the weather/music disjuncture (I don’t want to trudge through the snow to hear a band that sounds like the Beach Boys in a fishbowl). In any case, at first, the name Dum Dum Girls set a nearly insurmountable mental barrier. To my surprise, after dismounting my high horse and giving DDG a listen, I’m totally sold.

“It Only Takes One Night” starts off with driving, slightly overdriven drums and droning guitar, before the song is overtaken by haunting harmonies. The straight-ahead surf-rock beats, coupled with simple, fuzzed-out guitars work well throughout the record, especially on tracks like “O Mein M.” For my money, “Yours Alone” is the standout here, caking a simple love song in a hazy feedback and straight-ahead, single-note guitars.

In my view, the only missteps on this record come where DDG tone things down (see e.g. “Rest of Our Lives” and the incurably Vaselines-aping “Blank Girl”), losing the punch that otherwise sets them apart from the pack. On the whole, however, I Will Be stands out because, underneath all of the fuzz and reverb, it actually sounds like Dum Dum Girls are having fun. And isn’t that what summer is all about?

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After 12 years of playing together, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club is a California band that has tried it all and still hasn’t found what it wants. After releasing the maligned “The Effects of 333,” BRMC returns to its roots with Beat the Devil’s Tattoo. However, like a cultural mutt, it can’t quite figure out what style to call home. And unfortunately, on this record, BMRC refuses to do the hard work of creating a coherent, consistent identity.

The record starts out promisingly, with the title track, “Beat the Devil’s Tattoo”, a chant-filled hillbilly stomper, where the vocals follow the minor-tinged guitars and the percussion is provided primarily by the boots of the band. The song iterates between verse lyrics and and “AH-ah-AH-ah” choruses, with more guitars added as the song reaches its climax, a hypnotizing recitation of the song title. A promising start.

The next tune, “Conscience Killer”, is a faux-Stooges rocker that tips its hat to the band’s Wild One motorcycle roots. Unfortunately, for all its “rock”, it gives me a greasy garage-rock-revival feeling that I thought was left back at the beginning of last decade. A brief detour for the brit-pop “Bad Blood” (and more guitar pedals), and the band returns with more stomp. The molasses-paced “War Machine” would be punishing, but for the deep-on-drugs vocals, which seem to have forgotten that the band was supposed to be gritty again on this jam.

After quickly breaking it down for the ladies on the acoustic “Sweet Feeling” (which according to the lyrics, “is gone”), BRMC drops “Evol,” a Jesus & Mary Chain-bitefest that does violence to the legacy of all earlier iterations of the name “Evol.” And as the album progresses, BRMC doesn’t “do” all too much. Mid-tempo rocker. Acoustic breakdown. Brit-Pop jam. Repeat. The album’s closer, “Half-State”, isn’t the impressive hail mary that it was likely designed to be. Instead, it’s like a conversation with too many goodbyes.

If this record was released in the late 90s, with a full run on the British festival circuit, “Beat the Devil’s Tattoo” may have hit my ears differently. But it’s been well over a decade, with a full cycle of progressions and revivals on both sides of the pond. As a result, this record comes off as late to the party, downing the swill from half-empties and searching the fridge for leftovers.

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Abyss in B Minor, the latest album from Oslo natives Serena Maneesh, is a stellar and challenging follow-up to their self-titled debut. Incorporating electronic and industrial elements, Abyss creates a haunting, shape-shifting atmosphere.

In order to fully understand what you’re getting into, two points of note are in order. First, Abyss was recorded in a cave. Second, it was mixed by Rene Tinner, longtime dedicated engineer for krautrock masters, Can. The result is that the album frequently sounds like Can, recorded in a cave.

That’s not to say Serena Maneesh ditches the familiar (some would say too familiar) elements of their first album. In fact, the album seems to alternate between its new, heavier influences and their older, more Shields-laden style. But the ubiquity of that sound (especially after the MBV reunion), makes those tracks sound particularly staid.

The standout tracks here are, conveniently, the odd numbered ones. The album opener, “Ayisha Abyss,” is a sonic expedition. It features dark, haunting chords, chopped vocals, undulating bass, and layers of percussion that build and collapse over nearly eight-minutes, never quite releasing, never quite resolving. Serena Maneesh has always been best in its opening moments, and this album is no different.

“Reprobate!” incorporates airy vocals (read: MBV) over syncopated open hi-hat hits, which give the song a solid groove in the vein of similar experimenters, Laddio Bolocko. “Blow Yr Brains In The Morning Run,” which sounds like four songs at once, is an excellent example of Serena Maneesh’s continued mission to make its listeners work for the melodies, which are perpetually hidden within the chaos.

For me, the real success of the album is the way that it highlights the band’s progression over the last few years. Where the Serena Maneesh of the mid-aughts tended to mimic the sonic results of its forefathers, Abyss pushes the envelope, internalizing the innovative process that made its influences so great while creating a unique atmosphere they can call their own.

Standing toward the back, I watched Paramore-haired teenage girls and their bro-meets-lumberjack-cowboy male counterparts stream into the main hall of the Gramercy Theater in New York City. For a second I had that feeling you get when you visit your old high school. To think that many of the kids in the crowd were born in the same year that I picked up the first Punk-O-Rama, I felt distinctly “cooldadish.”

The first band on the lineup was Title Fight, who I regrettably missed. If you haven’t spent some time listening to “The Last Thing You Forget,” please do. It features gritty vocals over melodic but unrelenting technical hardcore. It internalizes the best of Hot Water Music, Small Brown Bike, and Latterman. For an up-and-coming band, Title Fight is one of the brightest spots in the scene today.

This Time Next Year, on the other hand, was wholly unimpressive. On appearance alone, they came off as the kind of ready-made band you’d see in a teen movie–you know, when the guy goes to find the girl at the punk show or whatever. The music isn’t too far off from this impression. Too clean cut, too predictable, too vacuous. Another Found Glory. “I’m sorry I’m not sorry.” Ucht.

Thankfully, the set was short, and when the lights went down on This Time Next Year, there was a palpable change in mood. The next band up was Strike Anywhere, whose new album, Iron Front, I’ve also reviewed for A&SB. Strike Anywhere is neither clean nor cut, but holy hell they were tight.

The band ripped through eleven songs at lightning speed, pulling from deep in the catalogue they’ve built up since 1999. The songs lost much of their melodic sheen in the live context, but overall, this was for the better. Even “I’m Your Opposite Number,” a bit of a clunker on the album itself, had a fist-to-gut quality that put the crowd in a frenzy. In fact, as the show went on, the songs only got more intense.

The one unfortunate moment came in “Chalkline,” a song about women’s rights–and against, oh I dunno, “corporatized misogyny”–in the vein of songs like Fugazi’s classic “Suggestion.” Before the song, singer Thomas Barnett called for all of his “hardcore sisters to prove that this hardcore thing is not just boys fun.” But when the song burst in, the boys only became more aggressive, and the girls remained on the sidelines. It was a shame, and only further highlighted the line between the scene’s ideals and its reality. The set concluded with Barnett screaming “pledge allegiance to the world,” and with that, Strike Anywhere exited, leaving the crowd in a sweat-drenched and breathless state.

The final band of the night was Four Year Strong, one of the leading acts in pop punk today. They are a perplexing amalgamation of pop punk, melodic hardcore, Vagrant-style emo, and Killswitch metalcore. If you’re the kind of person who likes bands compartmentalized into neat genres, Four Year Strong is not the band for you. But for the crowd at Gramercy that night, Four Year Strong was exactly what they wanted.

Similarly to Strike Anywhere, the live setting took some of the polish off of the vocals, which to my mind, benefits the band. The live setting also put the usually forward-mixed synths back into the maelstrom, which was a big bowl of relief for me, because if there’s one piece of advice I could give to every one of the pop punk and nu-emo bands out there, it’s “fire your synth player.” Not to say the keyboardist here didn’t have a valuable role–some of the best moments of the show came when he stepped from behind his setup and took the role of front man. But in my mind, that guy needs his own hardcore band: they would slay.

The best song, far and away, was the band’s new single, “Wasting Time.” The drums were jet-propulsive, and laid a rock solid foundation for the band to pile on one of the catchiest pieces of rock music I’ve heard in a long, long time. I’m especially thankful that the band eschewed its usually tongue-twisted lyrics for this track, heightening its memorability and ultimate staying power. The melodies are classic, but buttressed by a new and refreshing forcefulness. Without question, this is the best song they’ve ever written, and I’d be surprised if it didn’t explode.

Among all the positive aspects of the show, however, one thing that I found a bit odd was how frequently the band prefaced its choruses and breakdowns with “if you know the words…!” The first time was justified, the second time was curious, but by the 10th or 11th time, it got a bit tired. Further, during “Maniac (R.O.D.),” the call for a circle pit felt out of pace, especially in contrast to the similar call during Strike Anywhere’s more roots-oriented set. But such is the combination of pop and punk.

I could talk about the differences between when I was a kid and now, but I think it’s important to refrain from imposing values from my youth experience on today’s bands and young fans. To some kid in the crowd, it was the best moment of his or her life, and that person is going to go home and check out bands like Lifetime and Gorilla Biscuits and start a band. Even to jaded twenty-somethings like me, that’s still really awesome.

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Strike Anywhere is a melodic hardcore band from Richmond, VA with over a decade under their collective (collectivist?) belts. Since 1999, they have been churning out records of aggressive music steeped in activism and political awareness.
On Iron Front, released late in 2009 on Bridge Nine Records, Strike Anywhere continue their tradition with an album that is musically pummeling, if a bit heavy on the platitude. The band is tight as you’d expect after ten years of playing in lockstep at 200 bpm, and the production has the signature Salad Days punch. Thomas Barnett’s vocals are as strong and passionate as ever, alternating between infectious melody and throat-shredding shouts.

The record starts off with “Invisible Colony,” a blistering track that decries the influence of organized religion, the media, and war in “a glamorous, divisible United States.” At barely over one minute, the song leaves a strong first impression, portending good things to come.

Next comes the album’s single, “I’m Your Opposite Number,” which is vigorously… anti-stuff. Barnett has said that this song is about voting and remaining on guard even in ostensibly good times (see the references to “change”). In other words, it’s “against” the “system,” man. Unfortunately, the message is overshadowed by a slowed-down tempo and awkward jumps between the anthemic intro/outro and the lukewarm verses and choruses. The song comes off as designedly “the single,” with an unnecessary solo and browbeating repetition of the song’s title. I could have–and the album could have–done without it.

The next few tracks bring back the energy, a testament to Strike Anywhere’s commitment to their sound amidst the myriad stylistic “developments” in the scene generally. “South Central Beach Party” is the most upbeat of the songs on Iron Front, and finds Barnett and company “knocking like heartbeats on the skyscraper door.” He speaks “for justice” and demands “this future, not chaos” (though an anarcho-punk calling for “not chaos” is a bit ironic).

“Omega Footprint,” for my money, is the strongest song on the record. From start to finish, it is emblematic of the broader stylistic mission of Strike Anywhere. Beginning with breathless, rapid fire delivery and leading-word gang vocals, this track is relentless. The chanted chorus is a call to arms for environmentalists who are “tired of standing still,” and forms the song’s backbone. If you listen to one song from the record, make it this one.

The record concludes with a series of songs beginning with “Summerpunks,” the simplest and most straightforward track on the album, laden in “whoa-o-ohs.” This is followed by “First Will and Testament,” which for some reason I can’t help but compare to “Last Will and Testament” on the most recent Propagandhi record. In that light, this “First Will” sounds oddly corporate, a barrage of platitudes floating above run-of-the-mill pop-punk. But fear not! “Western Scale” is a welcome return to the forcefulness and passion of the beginning of the record, and an excellent closer.

The album is certainly a repeat-listen, a welcome addition to the Strike Anywhere catalogue. But a few questions always ring in my head while listening to activist punk rock. After you organize, after you smash the state, after the revolution: then what? And what if people don’t play along?

Shout Out Louds are an indie-pop band from Stockholm, Sweden. They have some boys and a girl in the band, and are affiliated with Peter, Bjorn & John (famous for the single most important moment in whistling history since Axl on “That’s Good“. The song builds with a piano line that is equal parts “All My Friends” and Peanuts theme, cutting out sporadically for vocals, which are unfortunately a bit too heavy on the reverb (think Arcade Fire covering Phoenix). The chorus would be fantastic but for the odd choice of guitar line, which is a bit too present in the mix and distracts from the rest of an otherwise driving chorus.

The next track, “Fall Hard,” is the real standout on the record. The guitars, while still a bit overwhelming, do not ultimately disappoint. The song features really interesting chord progressions and technical but still memorable leads. The horns are smooth and pleasant throughout. And while the vocals here are slightly too Robert Smith for comfort, the chorus differentiates Shout Out Louds from their contemporaries and gives the song a welcome uniqueness that is mostly absent on the remainder of the album.

After “Fall Hard” the subsequent songs are somewhat fly-over. These include “Play the Game” and “Walls,” which despite picking up the pace features a pinking piano line that reminds me of a similar, screeching Tegan and Sara song. “Moon” adds a nice violin in the mix that toes the Arcade Fire line (yet again) but is still nice enough.

The album doesn’t really regain its momentum until “Show Me Something New,” which brings the Grammis-award-winning bassist to the forefront with a simple but commanding line. The guitar-play on this track is stellar, I just wish the album had more of it. The chorus lyrics, while a bit simple in the thought department, plant a flag in your brain and won’t let go. It’s a great jam, and Shout Out Louds should have ended the album there. Unfortunately, they add an aptly-named plodder, “Too Late, Too Slow.” Yes, it was too late in the album for a song this slow. The melodies are salvageable, but without any drive, the song is a muted ending to an otherwise respectable album.

Work will be released on February 23rd, 2010.

Helen Earth Band is the latest incarnation of brothers Marc and Adam Allen, who previously played together in the criminally-underrated San Diego band, Counterfit . Counterfit was known for its unique blend of Southern California pop-punk and midwestern emo, drawing comparisons to bands like Mock Orange and Braid.

With Helen Earth Band, the Allen’s have built upon their old sound, drawing on new influences and instruments. Their latest single, “(We All) Talk With Knives,” is a pitch-perfect example of this progression.

The song swirls in a complex web of guitars, vocals and keyboards. The guitar lines feed off of one another in increasing complexity over ever-changing time signatures, all the while retaining a subtlety that prevents them from ever getting in the way. The vocals are similarly complementary, passed between the two primary vocalists and regularly augmented by the inclusion of a third vocal line. What they may be talking about in terms of content, I haven’t the faintest idea, except that its with knives, which can’t be a good thing. In any case, it’s not what they sing, but how they sing it. And damn they sing well.

The guitar and vocals are are sandwiched between a buzzing, ethereal keyboard and a steady, driving bass, giving the song a constant sense of movement and space. And it’s all anchored by rock-solid drums played with military precision. The drumming is deceptively complex, a seemingly straight beat that rarely repeats itself and accents the individual elements of the song at exactly the right moments. If you don’t believe me, try this: isolate the drums and vocals in your head, then do the same with the drums and the guitars, etc. It’s baffling.

But wait, you don’t need to imagine, we have an amazing video that does it for us.

Watching this video is like opening up the back of a grandfather clock, revealing in bright detail how each of the parts works independently to form an interconnected whole. You’ll be forgiven for not realizing that the backlights change between white, black, and an array of hazy blues and red bulbs. No matter. By focusing on the music, the video creates a further appreciation for the process of songwriting and live execution, shifting the focus from fashion to function.

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Charlie Parker used to hang out in Charlie’s Tavern, a musician’s bar in midtown New York. To the dismay of his acolytes, he liked to play country records on the jukebox. There was reluctance to question the taste of mighty Bird, but finally a brave jazzman asked him. “How can you stand that stuff?” Bird looked at him and said, “The stories, man. Listen to the stories!”

I have a tough time with lyrics. I generally don’t care what an artist has to say, and I’m frequently disappointed when I focus in on the words in a song I love, only to find that the lyrics are slapdash, cliche, or try way too hard. It’s like finding out what someone’s symbolic tattoo means (dignity, obviously). You can’t unlearn the lyrics; you can’t bring it back to gibberish. In my mind, a truly great song, or album, is one that can tell a good story, evoking not just time-lapse Adamsesque landscapes (I’m looking at you, post-rock) or ubiquitous-yet-overworn interpersonal issues. It’s not easy, nor should it be.

Defeater, a Boston hardcore band, have two releases that stand apart from their peers based on their willingness to take chances with storytelling. In an interview, their guitarist has said, “[w]ith no disrespect to any bands out there I would say that hardcore has enough songs about straight edge / unity / family / etc.” Acting on this impulse, their first LP, Travels, recounted the life of a broken-down man from unwanted birth to church-steeple suicide. It was like Luke the Drifter gone hardcore, and it’s still one of my favorite albums from 2008. With Lost Ground, Defeater spins-off the story of a bit player in Travels, the homeless vet from “Prophet in Plain Clothes,” to great effect.

The record opens with “The Red, White and Blues,” which finds the protagonist at a bar, downing whiskey on the night before deployment to war. As the story progresses, he fights on the front lines of some unknown war, as his resolve and compatriots are killed (“No hope/Just folded flags.”), and he himself is gravely wounded. Upon returning to the States, he becomes jobless and alcoholic, pining for a better life a train-ride away (“Singin’ New York Town”). But NYC eats him alive, and the record closes with the vet “Beggin’ in the Slums.” The album trails off with the familiar folk strum of “A Prophet in Plain Clothes,” dovetailing with Travels and completing the circle. And, mostly importantly, the vocals don’t come off as yelling-to-yell, nor are they so quick or obfuscated to completely cloud the words and meaning. In short, they fit the story.

And while the story ropes the listener in, the real standouts here are the instrumentation and the production.
This record is an air-drummer’s dream, perhaps designedly so: it’s the first thing that the listener hears upon hitting play. The drums sit high in the mix, the snare has a perfect FWAP!, the kick is like a heel to the chest, and the toms have an incredible, infrasonic boom. The drums on “The Red, White and Blues” are flat-out pummeling, and the verse on “The Bite and Sting” is tech enough to impress but tasteful enough to respect the listener’s ears. The hi-hat work on “Singin’ New York Town” is similarly amazing. It’s as if the record has taken the best of melodic hardcore and post-hardcore, eschewing the trappings of the maligned “bro” variety. And thankfully, the record never gives into the temptation to use today’s scene-standard Meshuggah rhythms (“da-dun, da-dun, da-dun-da-dun, dun, da-dun”).

But that’s why Defeater is so compelling, they don’t give into any scene-standards. It’s formula free, devoid of cliches. The guitars use big and complex chords to add constant tension and release–not chunky power chords or cheesy octaves. On the low-end, Lost Ground features the thickest and dirtiest bass you’ve ever heard, which simultaneously buttresses the guitars and colors the already-deadly drums.  Finally, Defeater breaks free of the typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus-breakdown-chorus structure, keeping things interesting throughout.

Lost Ground is a perfect addendum to Travels, preserving its amazing storytelling while continuing to improve song-writing and structure. It is a must-listen.