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.
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Cedar Avenue’s Someday Soon is a pop rock confection with fresh programming and keys – turning what should sound monotonous into engaging experimentation. But the album could certainly use more of it.
Above all else, the Minnesota-based four piece offers smooth radio-friendly vocals and harmonies that the younger lady set will love. And its no wonder, Cedar Avenue is an immensely talented ensemble that seems to have ironed out any wrinkles in days long past.
But in music, you can oftentimes be too perfect — the primary weakness of Someday Soon is that the singing and melodies don’t sound much different across tracks, and the album needed far more experimentation with tempo and digital programming to distract from that.
Give Up The Ghost by Good Kids Sprouting Horns was recorded in a bedroom, and it sounds like it was recorded in a bedroom. Not to mention a thin bed of static. But that’s the thing – It’s real.
But sometimes real just means that you’ve heard this stuff before. The instrumentation is hardly ground-breaking — it is layered well enough, but sloppily. And much of the production doesn’t credibly offer the live feeling it seeks to create or stumble into much else.
The album begins with Popcorn Ceiling, the track posted below. It’s an ode to the thought of ever having to leave that place — that bedroom and the mental state it governs. The lyrics and arrangement recall countless conversations had in small rooms littered with out-of-date recording equipment and wires shaped like the red lines on your feet. Conversations that always seem to conclude, “what do we know?”
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“Popcorn Ceiling” has the kind of sonic repetition that seems like the perfect kind of cynical in that bedroom, but hurts an album’s replay value in the real world.
For every time the purposefully off-kilter keyboarding produces a lively result, such as the second track, Double Digits, A Life Achievement there is a track like the appropriately named Effigy, that just seems out of place.
Still, it takes a certain amount of bravery to leave tracks like, “Headache” so sparce, with faint rolling percussion that lives outside a simple keyed melody on the choruses and vocals during verses.
“The sidewalks are cracking/ there’s no place left to step/ my god isn’t listening and he will not save our mothers” vocalist and lead guitarist Anthony Bitetti sings on the fourth track, “but if I had just a little more time/ I would tell you all the reasons I love to hide — tonight is the night we die.”
A bit over the top, yes. But if that’s the kind of thing that scares you away, you won’t like this album anyway. (The track concludes with about a minute of static-y chatter.)
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Below is a list of new releases that we either listened to and love, or expect you to care about. Let us know if we forgot anything in the replies.
Later this year LAPKO will unveil their new album, A New Bohemia, in the US – for now all we get are teaser videos and cryptic messages from the band. You can also check out a new track “A New Bohemia Melody” on their MySpace.
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.
Fan Death, why did you leave us? Originally from Brooklyn, the now Vancouver-based disco-pop duo just released their first EP, A Coin for the Well, on Pharmacy Records. In 2008 they released their first single Veronica’s Veil, and while it was the string-driven disco I’ve now come to except from them, it still felt right playing it alongside the likes of CSS and Yelle. With the release of this EP, however, I’m not sure I still feel comfortable saying that. A Coin for the Well is straight, unadulterated disco.
Their second single and the first off this album, Cannibal, displays this best. Actually the first five seconds may be the most disco part of the album, and if for some unfathomable reason that is a turn off for you I insist that you listen on. Just before lead vocalist Dandilion Wind Opaine chimes in, a somehow fitting, Middle-Eastern influenced violin line drops to conclude the opening. Opaine’s blasé voice carries the rest of the most pop track on the record.
The rest of the album leans more disco on the disco-pop spectrum. Power Surge is the unheralded anthem, which I hope turns into the next single. Sans the retro synth, Soon plays like a R&B ballad that ends with a sax that can’t settle on being too cool or too sultry, a problem this album has in droves. Instrumentally, The Son Will Rise is the closest Fan Death gets to Hi-NRG, but Opaine remains unmoved even as the synths beg her to kick it up a notch during the chorus. Finally, the first track, Reunited, may be my favorite thanks to the epically eccentric video below. What can I say? I’m a sucker for any Purple Rain shoutout.
The duo, now with backing band, is currently on tour overseas opening up for Vampire Weekend. If you’re heading to Austin next month you can catch them during SXSW though. Their debut album Womb Of Dreams is scheduled for a May release.
Who doesn’t want to jam the fuck out in a taxi? Die Antwoord does just that in the Taxijam series (which seems to be videos of different artists each week singing in a taxi). It’s slightly frightening.
A&SB is a music & media blog (and sometimes record label) run by some fine writers as well as the folks over at Paper Tiger. Sometimes we review records, sometimes we just post articles about new music we love, and sometimes we post about new happenings surrounding Paper Tiger artists.
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