Joseph's Picks Of The Week 3/2/12 - Nation of Ulysses and Thelonious Monk

Big recent news has it that The Make*Up are reuniting for some live shows around the estimable All Tomorrow’s Parties series, and for folks that never had the chance to see them, that’s a golden opportunity to experience one of the more dynamic live acts to splat out of the ‘90s indie scene. Take it from me, for I witnessed their glorious spectacle on numerous occasions in clubs, art galleries and even a sushi-bar basement during their prolific and too-brief period of neo-mod/freakbeat/R&B motion.

For many The Make*Up = Ian Svenonius. That’s not a bit accurate, but in the case of a front-man/vocalist this galvanizing, it’s also not a bit surprising. And it’s an impulse that’s largely came about due to the guy’s rather brilliant (if divisive by intention) transformation into a musically shrewd performer as social commentator as writer as indie-media personality. But as any fan of Svenonius will tell you, this wasn’t always the case.

As evidence please consider the vigorously conceptual post-harDCore troupe Nation of Ulysses. It might strain the britches of some of Ian’s strident non-fans to hear it, but I (after much consideration) believe the NoU are amongst the top half dozen Dischord acts in the labels considerable history (the others, since you asked and in chronological order, are Minor Threat, Void, Rites of Spring, Fugazi, and Lungfish). To put a fine point on it, not only was the Nation a real breath of fresh air in purely Dischordian terms, but they also helped in providing a sweet alternative to the waves of T-shirt clad regular-guy indie noise rockers that were so dominant (as to become almost oppressive) in the moments just before grunge blew the lid off of the scene.

Indeed, a big part of the Nation’s concept (as well as Svenonius’ modus operandi as a whole) was to pull the rug out from underneath the error of equating the beatific properties of DIY with the under-the-radar rumblings of Joe-average schmoes. And the perceived arrogance of a bunch of (some would say entitled) kids playing dress-up and approximating the persona of elitist revolutionaries got under the skin of more than just those perched to despise anything not cloaked in a blanket of earnest self-deprecation. Even lynchpin Dischord engineer Don Zientara described the NoU as acting like real “prima-donnas” in the studio.

But that’s something I always dug about Nation of Ulysses (and Ian’s attitude in general); they really popped the balloon of expectations over u-ground rock musicians needing to be humble and approachable and just like you and me. They also took very seriously that they were performing (and by extension what they were performing), which obviously didn’t sit well with those who’ve misunderstood the wisdom to be gleaned from punk.

Specifically, much has been made of Minutemen’s working-class punk ethos, but what many people either don’t understand or simply ignore is that Watt Boon and Hurley were on stages playing music and delivering a show that the vast majority of their audiences couldn’t have replicated. When they said “Our band could be your life” in “History Lesson” it didn’t mean that the listener should be satisfied with their status as a self-effacing consumer or audience member or fan; it was intended to inspire self-improvement and the unrealized potential to be something other than just another anonymous prole.

And in my mind Nation of Ulysses (that’s Ian S, Steve Kroner, Tim Green, Steve Gamboa, and James Canty) is one of the last bands to be legitimately touched by the fall-out from the original punk wave. For instance, they provided a commentary upon the increasing emptiness of punk’s political grounding not by lampooning it but by complicating the subject matter far beyond the comfort zone of those satisfied with simply shouting slogans. The band’s militant-group guise (kinda unthinkable post-9/11) and deliberately obscure rhetoric has been derided by some as shtick, but I tend toward the kinder description of theatre. Shtick is something relatively easy to convey. Jokesters love shtick, but what NoU was conveying was the best type of comedy, one of profound seriousness. Theatre, if done well anyway, requires dedication and imagination.

And the Nation had both in spades. In my estimation, the best document of their abilities is their second and final full-length Plays Pretty For Baby. While both of the band’s 7-inch records are stone gassers of youthful ambition and bombastic punk execution, Plays Pretty was a marked improvement over the already quite impressive debut LP 13-Point Program to Destroy America. Where that record was full of unleashed post-HC fury and loaded with excellent songs, its follow-up distilled these elements with the precision of a group that thrived in the lived setting.

It also diversified their sonic template with unexpected forays into jazz (or more appropriately “jazz-like”) territory. These moments shouldn’t have been surprising considering NoU’s employment of trumpet as an aid for sonic disruption, but they still managed to raise the eyebrows of many with their sheer dedication to approximating a bunch of energy and intellect drenched kids intoxicated on the uncut spirits of prime ‘60s Impulse recordings. And this jazz love fit right in to the Nation’s conceptual ballgame. For if blues and folk are the wood-shedding material of the humble rocker then jazz is the true weapon of any young revolutionary. Just ask John Sinclair.

And that leads me to a nice observation. At their best (which was often) Nation of Ulysses sorta came off like the MC5 if they’d exploded not from the ‘60s Motor City but from underneath the floorboards of the just post-Revolution Summer Dischord House. It’s not the sound but the presentation; Plays Pretty For Baby opens with a brief bit of loosely delivered spoken-word ambiance that, while distinct from Rob Tyner’s rousing intros on "Kick Out the Jams", still manages to convey complimentary intent. If the MC5 were (only briefly) the personification of a ‘60s youth movement that possessed the interest in politics and social issues but sadly lacked long-term commitment, the Nation of Ulysses were the righteous dissenters in a early ‘90s u-ground scene populated by so many folks willing to throw their ideals out the window once the post-Nevermind floodgates opened.

It’s great that the NoU’s ideological concepts are so thick and tasty, but like Tyner, Wayne Kramer and company (Michael Davis RIP), what matters in the end is the music; listening again to Plays Pretty For Baby it’s clear that music will carry the day.

Once upon a time, Thelonious Sphere Monk was considered too esoteric for mass consumption. These days the man is as deep in the jazz pantheon as it gets, but it should be stated that most of the tribute recordings that I’ve heard outside of the late great Steve Lacy (a sax man!!) register as safe and uninspiring. To the point, they miss what makes Monk so vital and contemporary, instead flattening his music (and not just the songs but most importantly the man’s undyingly brilliant playing) into a museum worthy atmosphere (no hostility toward museums, but Monk’s achievements sprung from the far different locus of the bandstand) that while not necessarily sterile still deflates the songs, from conception to delivery, into shadows of what they were in the hands of the master over fifty years ago.

Back in ’55, Riverside producer Orrin Keepnews understood what made Thelonious Monk such an amazing and sui generis figure. Indeed, the title of his second record for Riverside is appropriately titled The Unique Thelonious Monk. But at this early stage Keepnews also understood that many ears were still resistant to the man’s unimpeachable greatness, with some dissenters dismissing him as a flake and others even damning him as non-musical. Those that valued the (to my ear) vastly overrated “flying-fingers” approach of Oscar Pederson were likely to backhand Monk as annoyingly eccentric at best. It wasn’t really until the early ‘60s, after free jazz had tore the roof off the house of post-bop, that Monk started attaining something like mainstream acceptance, getting his beautiful mug on the cover of Time  Magazine and scoring that late-career recording contract with Columbia Records.

So knowing what he was up against, Keepnews decided it would be best to have Monk initially abstain from recording his own compositions; instead, he would interpret standards, a tactic that gave the skeptical some solid footing in grappling with the new conceptions of Monk’s style. In fact his first Riverside release was also a covers only affair, the essential Thelonious Monk Plays the Music of Duke Ellington. If this all sounds like compromise…well, yeah. But it wasn’t a bad strategy. You see, Monk’s whole thing, while gesturing at times toward European models, was very much a straight-up expansion on the jazz aesthetic. It’s just that he was one of the great musical modernists, and groundbreakers of this stripe are rarely rewarded with acceptance from the jump.

Standards had been tackled by jazzmen for a long while before Monk first sat in with his bebop cohorts at Minton’s Playhouse. But the tradition of standards was largely one of homage, of reinvention, of crowd-pleasing, of personal indulgence. In the case of Monk’s early work for Riverside it was a different affair, a gesture of sincerity hopeful of meeting a wider potential audience halfway. And again, because the man’s greatness is as much about playing as it is composition, this meet-in-the-middle proposition worked wonderfully as a document of pure musical expression.

But this framing of The Unique Thelonious Monk is frankly not the best way to engage with the music in the here and now. It’s certainly historically important for contextualization, but it’s also a flat fact that anybody at this late date continuing to pontificate objections over Monk’s work is simply the worst kind of moldy, dehydrated fig. The pendulum has indeed swung in the other direction, with folks that possess far too much disposable income feeling the need to get gussied up in tuxes and gowns to sit and watch and politely applaud as talented but imaginatively compromised individuals mummify Monk’s legacy. But there is another angle in which to consider The Unique, and it has to do with the ever present and often problematic mode of expression known as the piano trio.

Now there has been a seriously considerable amount of great piano trio recordings, so many in fact that I’ll probably go to my deathbed without getting to hear them all. But these studies in baseline rhythmic improvisation are very often unapologetic exercises in form-for-form’s sake (which is cool in itself) lacking in the breath-force provided by horn players that also frequently tackle the well-worn melodiousness of standards. This makes them not only acceptable listening on hung-over mornings but also in coffee shops, in upscale restaurants and in nursing homes. And that’s alright. But due to their broad agreeability the goddamn records of these triangular endeavors have a tendency to multiply like rabbits nourished on nothing but high-vitamin carrots and uncut Spanish Fly.

And there is also the issue of the piano-trio’s inherent suitability as a soundtrack for cocktail shenanigans. Part of this stems from how the non-horned conception of keys, bass and drums has long been the preferred backdrop for the supper-clubby environs of the jazz vocalist. To be frank, the tradition of the singer has always been one of my least favorite elements of the great big bag of jazz. Sure, Billie’s beautiful, and I dig Ella and King Pleasure and Anita O’Day and Johnny Hartman and Helen Merrill and Betty Carter (to say nothing of sweet disruptors like Patty Waters, Linda Sharrock and Jeanne Lee), but the fact remains that one big reason I got into jazz in the first place was to escape the harsh domineering of the vocalist in modern music. The jazz singer far too often feels like a gesture toward (and in a contemporary setting reminder of) jazz’s (long-gone) commercial heyday. And the piano trio can very often fall into this same zone, almost seeming to strive for the aural wallpaper status appropriate for sipping overpriced mixed-drinks.

Some of this seems to stem from the simple misinterpretation of Bill Evans’ amazing Village Vanguard recordings with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian. But a much bigger part of it is due to the very nature of the piano. The instrument’s 88 keys offer unparalleled possibilities in relation to notes and chords, but this opportunity is also stubbornly resistant to offering avenues outside a range of comfortable familiarity. That’s why the piano was resistant for so long to the full-fledged excursions of free-jazz (outside of Cecil Taylor, of course). It’s why Ornette Coleman eschewed the keyboard for so long, and it’s why avant-classical composer John Cage jumped headfirst into prepared piano in expending the pinetop’s sonic possibilities. And it’s also part of why Monk had such an initial rough time.

The Unique Thelonious Monk presents the man in tandem with bassist Oscar Pettiford and drummer Art Blakey. It’s a grandly executed set of seven standards, and it belongs in any serious library of the jazz form. It finds Monk approaching the songs with sensitivity without losing any of the qualities that make his music such a thrilling gift to this day. Pettiford and Blakey come to the music not as pros (which they of course were) but as fully engaged coconspirators, aiding the proceedings with rare knowledge and grace. It’s a short set, but in this age of marathon CD sessions, that’s a plus. The trio sets up, digs in, gets down to it and leaves the ears in a state of sublime appreciation. All that’s left is to reflect or play the record again.

Along with his earlier date for Prestige (The Thelonious Monk Trio), The Unique Thelonious Monk shares space with other magnificent studies in piano trio form from such august names as Bud Powell (The Amazing Bud Powell Vol. 2), Sonny Clark (The Sonny Clark Trio), Herbie Nichols (Complete Blue Note Recordings), Tommy Flanagan (Overseas), Phineas Newborn (The Great Jazz Piano), Mal Waldron (Mal 4: Trio), Duke Ellington (Money Jungle), Chick Corea (Now He Sings, Now He Sobs), Keith Jarrett (Morning of a Star), Andrew Hill (Nefertiti & Strange Serenade) and of course Bill Evans (do yourself a big solid and invest in The Complete Live at The Village Vanguard 1961).

Unlike Jarrett, Waldron and Evans, Monk rarely recorded in the trio format (I’m unfamiliar with any authorized releases post-Unique), so that’s another factor in this record’s favor. But the biggest is that even when working in a mode of least resistance in hopes of gaining new listeners, Monk still sounds incomparable. That’s the thing his legions of copyists still don’t understand; in order to really be like Monk you have to be yourself.



Joseph's Picks Of The Week 2/24/12 - Laura Gibson and The Gaye Blades

On La Grande, Portland, Oregon’s Laura Gibson expands upon the fragile alt-folk of her previous releases while retaining the qualities that make her such an appealing example of contemporary Americana.

My introduction to Gibson came in the live setting, where she opened for and accompanied a solo show by Decemberist Colin Meloy to fabulous effect. His tour CD Colin Meloy Sings Sam Cooke also happened to be enriched by Gibson’s strong backing vocals, their presence prompting me to seek out Six White Horses: Blues and Traditionals Vol. 1, an exceptional all covers EP featuring versions of a half-dozen tunes drawn from such acoustic legends as Elizabeth Cotten, Mance Lipscomb and Furry Lewis. While released by Hush, the Portland-based label that served as the early home of the Decemberists, Six White Horses still felt very much like a homemade document, the kind of recording passed around amongst friends/fans that slowly gains a small, devoted following. From there I tracked down 2006’s If You Come to Greet Me and 2009’s Beasts of Seasons, two full length records that showed Gibson’s talent extending beyond the realms of imaginative interpretation. Both records detailed an ability to sound out-of-time without seeming contrived and combined this with a talent to express vulnerability and loss without registering as maudlin.

Up to this point Gibson’s best attributes have been the unique depth of her voice and the tender strength of her tunes. As vintage as some of her moves can be, and there is a definitely an old (if not necessarily weird) vibe radiating from much of her stuff, this combination places Gibson squarely in the comparatively recent tradition of singer-songwriter. Folk-derived without being homespun or rustic, she’s been compared to names ranging from Karen Dalton, Joanna Newsom, Chan Marshall, Jolie Holland and Gillian Welch, all of which are appropriate to varying degrees. The distinctiveness of her vocals is similar to Newsom, though Gibson is less assertively unusual and more delicate. Also, the core of her music very often evokes the calm of the back porch instead of the rigors of the rock club, and this is certainly remindful of Welch.

La Grande seems immediately calculated to alter the attractive intimacy previously dominant in her work. With its rollicking drums and tense sonic atmosphere, the opening title cut evokes the soundtrack to a cactus-town noir, somewhere between the filmic vistas of later Tom Waits and the sturdy sound-world of Calexico, whose Joey Burns guests here. It’s the kind of song well-suited for getting a room full of appreciative fans right into the spirit of things, but Gibson abruptly and shrewdly changes tactics with “Milk Heavy, Pollen Eyed”, a pretty little down-tempo ditty with achy horns that’s similar to the early work of Nashville titans Lambchop.

In her loose vocal delivery Gibson is reminiscent at times of M. Ward (particularly on the young heart/old soul dichotomy of “Red Moon”), which is well-suited for the broadening of her sound. But she smartly takes this development into areas very specific to her personality. “Lion/Lamb” integrates a jazzy sensibility that rather than heading for the smoldering zone of the late-night bandstand is instead lightly kissed with the always refreshing aura of prime Astrud Gilberto. Additionally, “The Rushing Dark” manages to approximate a bit of uptown bluesy lamentation sourced from some ancient Columbia Records’ 78 without getting at all precious about it. Not for a second does it sound dinky or contrived. But “Crow Swallow” again redirects her energies into a more contemporary sphere, examining mildly Newsom-like territory with brass accents that recall Zack Condon. I also like the fluid shifts in tempo on the penultimate track “Time is Not”, and the bruised piano-mistress feel of “Feather Lungs”, with its well-applied chamber-pop strings, provides an exceptional closer for an album that’s over far too quickly.

But multiple listens reveal what’s perhaps the most eye opening aspect of La Grande, specifically Gibson’s emergence as a versatile instrumentalist. In addition to arranging duties, she plays a dozen instruments across the course of the album, effectively beginning her movement beyond the frequently constraining aspects of the singer-songwriter genre. This is a big step, for if Six White Horses revealed her as an fine interpreter ala Dalton, both full-length discs occasionally gave the impression that she was a bit beholden to outside contributors (mainly members of Norfolk & Western, but on Beast of Seasons also contemporary avant-violin great Eyvind Kang) to help lend her records an increased level of dimensionality. If that was ever indeed the case, it’s no more. On top of multi-instrumentalist duties La Grande makes clear that Gibson’s collaborators were chosen simply for their ability to realize her vision. And she can certainly pick ‘em. In addition to Joey Burns the record hosts Rachel Blumberg and Jenny Conlee of the Decemberists, the pair helping “The Fire” to come off like a land-locked incarnation of that august band playing for bean soup and cornbread at some Saturday night barn dance. Wish I’d been there.

La Grande makes clear that Gibson is gaining confidence and adeptness not just as a writer, singer and player, but as a musician savvy enough to successfully weave all three elements into a whole befitting repeated listens. To be fair she’s always been a fine guitarist, but nimble fingered string pullers aren’t hard to find. And her talent for self-accompaniment was also admirable, but the sort of closeness evoked so well by If You Come to Greet Me and Beasts of Seasons is hard to sustain over time. Even if that well-calibrated mood of melancholy and mortality could’ve been sustained without fatigue, it would likely have tempted the listener to ask “What else have you got?” Thankfully with Laura Gibson that’s a question one needn’t pose, for La Grande already provides the answer.

It’s nice to know that no matter how strong the possible (hell! probable) impulse toward contemporaneousness lurking inside the furrowed folds of the current rock scene, that we have bands like The Gaye Blades intermittently popping up to disrupt the tyranny of being up to date.

Featuring members of such esteemed junk rock heavyweights as Black Lips, Gentleman Jesse and his Men and The Carbonas, The Gaye Blades can perhaps register as a bit of a lark. Side bands have a tendency to do that, particularly when they lean toward a template of boisterous party-throttling instead of the urge to either break new ground or reinforce the prevailing streams of the time.

And that’s how it should be. The allure of the one-off record has generally been about shoving aside expectations and getting back to the basics of what I like to call Pure Throwing Down. And this applies equally to the rumbles from undeniably star-studded affairs as it does to the doing it for the sheer hell of it discographical asides issued by more underground figures. Actually, after giving it some consideration, it’s in the low-expectation/high performance zone of the side band that household names and comparatively unheralded toilers can join together in celebration of the goodness inherent in rock’s economy of scale. It’s where the sweet studio screwery of the Hopkins Cooder Wyman Jagger Watts Jamming with Edward or the bruising Stoogeoid mess-around of the Moore Shelley Fleming Hell Dim Stars material rubs shoulders with The Gaye Blades and their Norton label mates The Ding-Dongs (comprised of neo-garage heavy-hitter Mark Sultan and Canadian rockabilly manic Bloodshot Bill, dontcha know).

If operational shoulder rubbing between these four examples is extant (and I certainly think it is) then it’s also with the Blades and the Dongs that we can glimpse some deeply conspiratorial, in fact almost coital, communion. For in both groups (the Blades a kinetic if appealingly featherweight four-piece, the Dongs a stripped down and dirty duo) there is a determined predilection for plundering the essence of uncut ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll exaltedness. This is getting to be something of a trend (especially if any revived rock moves of a pre-Beatles vintage are equated with “the 1950s”) and I can’t say I’m the slightest bit displeased. I mean, who would’ve thought that doo-wop, Spector, ‘billy and horn-honking R&B would become a small but viable part of the current u-ground state of affairs, much less one with an actually hip cadre of fans? Not me, but I’m as pleased as a punch drunk Shriner that I can revel in this rich mulch instead of sitting on a stump contemplating the contempo relevance of dubstep. Zing!

And if that mention of hipness worries you (shiver me timbers!), please relax. The main attribute keeping this batch of backward-looking upstarts from falling into the pits of style over substance (thus far) is the endeavor of getting right down to brass tacks on cheap instruments in practice spaces over all and sundry. That and a sincere dedication to songs. This naturally helps heaps in not only not sounding like this month’s flavor, but also in not sounding like the other bands within their similar sonic temperament.

For instance, The Gaye Blades differ significantly from The Ding-Dongs in concept and execution. Where the latter actually manage to sound like a long-lost and loopy slab of throbbing rockabilly meat, the former come off like a bunch of smart teens who while out searching for musical inspiration ended up unsuspectingly waylaid by somebody’s ultra-cool uncle’s record collection, the kids opportunistically absorbing wholesale moves and then applying them to a handful of brilliantly basic songs in the admirable attempt to win their high school’s battle of the bands. Did they do it? Well, if not the damned thing was rigged.

As should be obvious, The Gaye Blades self-titled 10-song LP is very much cut from Ramones-like cloth, though in concept not in execution, being much sunnier in disposition, though by no means oppressively so. One more time: this is ‘50s inflected power-popish (read: not pop-punkish) R&R with harmonies and hooks by the bushel. But unlike the Ding-Dongs, it all sounds just as likely to have been made last week as in the days of 1976. And that’s a fine duality to consider.

It may seem like I’ve spent the majority of this review talking around The Gaye Blades instead of about them, and that’s not incorrect. Fact is, bands of this level of simplicity and directness are somewhat resistant to extended analysis. The concept is extremely basic; the songs get down onto disc and it either succeeds or fails or falls somewhere in between. But the context of the concept is always worth a few hundred words. And when the knob is turned way up so that for a few too brief moments everything feels alright in the world, the music shines like a diamond.

Joseph's Picks Of The Week 2/17/12 - Cloud Nothings and Of Montreal

There are a whole lot of bands around these days that sound a whole lot like the ‘90s, and Cloud Nothings is one of the best.

It’s important to remember that for many youthful artists and bands currently on the scene, the music of indie’s explosion from twenty years ago can sorta serve as Their Own Private Classic Rock. The first big point in Cloud Nothings’ favor is that the recordings don’t register as a hodgepodge of influences strung together in the absence of/attempt to locate a tangible musical voice; instead they sound like the work of one strapping young band.

Did I say band? Indeed I did, and that’s another interesting feature in Cloud Nothings’ trajectory. Commencing with records that inhabited (mostly by necessity) the thick of the lo-fi noisy-pop zone, guitarist/songwriter Dylan Baldi’s project quickly and sensibly evolved into a full band dynamic as the good words spread about a fresh-faced and talented tunesmith from Cleveland, OH. There were some understandable growing pains as the transition was made; from my angle, 2010’s self-titled LP suffered from too many songs that felt like reheated ‘90s pop-punk. The problem was that Baldi’s hooky songs sounded great through the constrained window of lo-fi’s bedroom/basement form but suffered when applied to a bolder/heavier rock sensibility. Thankfully on the Cloud Nothings’ new long-player Attack on Memory the kinks have been knocked out and then some; it’s a record that serves as both a worthy document of development and as Baldi’s most diversely realized group of songs.

A lot of old heads will give too much of the credit for the LP’s success to producer Steve Albini, and in a sense this is understandable. Up to this point it wouldn’t have been inappropriate to describe Cloud Nothings as quirky or nerdy, in large part due to Baldi’s adenoidal singing style, but on Attack on Memory the music registers as naturally heavy, with the leader’s voice having quickly matured into a appealing rasp that feels truly complimentary to the music instead of just accentuating a sharp contrast, which was often the case the previous LP. And the first two tracks on Attack on Memory make clear just how willing Baldi is to shake up the program of his own success. Opener “No Future/No Past” hits upon a mid-tempo bass heavy exercise in delayed dynamic release that feels like something the Touch and Go or Dischord labels would’ve released around ’92 or so (for kindred examples think Tar or Jawbox), and “Wasted Days” summons up the same era’s indie-centric combination of abrasiveness, melody, volume and velocity without sounding beholden to any specific exponent of the style. That the song is stretched out to eight and a half engaging minutes sets it up as a particularly apropos set closer in its probable ability to transform contemporary club crowds into a messy mass of flailing frenzy; kinda like that Archers of Loaf show you saw back in ’93, except minus that one insistently crowd-surfing dork who managed to give you a stiff-arm right in the face (screw that guy).

But Baldi hasn’t forsaken his pop roots. Both side one’s closer “Fall In” and the flip’s opener “Stay Useless” add to the sum of his melodic progressions, and while the pop-punkishness is still present, on Attack on Memory it’s starting to channel the thornier, more appealing exponents of the genre’s ‘90s manifestation such as Pacific-Northwest wildcards Seaweed, for one example. That these more typical offerings are followed by the very cooking instrumental “Seperation” helps to differentiate Baldi’s Cloud Nothings from other past and current bands that operate(d) with one clear figure in the leadership role, a place where music lyrics and vocals always seem to march in lockstep. And unlike Girls’ Christopher Owens’ near-instrumental “Lawrence”, a tribute to songwriter Lawrence Hayward of excellent UK band Felt, Baldi’s “Seperation” simply registers as the bold desire to rock the hell out, easily succeeding without lessening the leader’s primacy on Cloud Nothings’ state of affairs one little bit.

It also proves that Baldi has done much more than just dip a toe into the ‘90s indie rock pond, making Attack on Memory a sincere extension of the far from exhausted template of an earlier era (e.g. Fugazi’s long list of instrumentals, here [possibly] influencing Cloud Nothings in a manner markedly different from the DC band’s effect on say Mogwai) and not a shallow offering of nostalgia (i.e. “Famous For 15 Minutes: Indie Rock Edition – The Presidents of the United States of America vs. Veruca Salt).

But maybe the most promising aspect of Attack on Memory is signified through album closer “Cut You”’s abrupt fadeout, which posits this group as very much a work in progress, with Baldi having thus far avoided the potential trap of a codified sound. Things are still very much up in the air for Cloud Nothings; while all the strengths and growth they flaunt on this LP are a commendable achievement in themselves, as the needle lifts Attack on Memory sounds even better by boding extremely well for the future.





Of Montreal’s Paralytic Stalks clocks in at just under an hour and it ultimately registers every minute of its running time. However, that shouldn’t be read as a bad thing.

Ten albums deep into a career that falls into two distinct halves (with a little bit of expected overlap) beginning with the Elephant 6 twee-pop era and followed by the more stylistically robust glam and R&B inflected portion to which Paralytic Stalks is the latest unfurling, leader Kevin Barnes hasn’t exactly been identified with the idea of restraint in creativity at any point across that span. And this certainly has its appeal; part of the fun in Of Montreal’s younger toy-town psyche incarnation was the boldness of execution. 1997’s debut Cherry Peel made it immediately clear the band’s (as a band they indeed were in those days) music was a love it or leave it alone proposition. With the shift essentially begun with 2004’s Satanic Panic in the Attic and solidified on the big indie splash of 2007’s Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, Barnes’ confessional, heart-on-sleeve album-as-therapeutic cleansing has probably turned off as many listeners as it has won over with its conceptual boldness, judicious stylistic pilfering and strident agenda of newness.

Indeed, any curious body looking to dip a metaphoric toe into the pond of murky mascara that is Of Montreal should begin with Hissing Fauna, which remains his most widely appreciated release. Since that time, Barnes has been messing with the program of Fauna’s success with wildly divergent results, and Paralytic Stalks is the latest attempt to test the boundaries of his sound world and challenge the perceptions of his listenership. As released on double-LP vinyl Stalks can be summed up as having a relatively accessible disc followed by one that’s significantly less so. And it can be tempting to predict that in a decade sides A and B of many copies will be showing a lot more of the ol’ snap, crackle and pop of frequent play than will sides C and D. This is pure conjecture of course, and in fact Paralytic Stalks already feels like the kind of release that begs for a re-reviewing in six months’ or a year’s time.

My personal early impression is that it takes a little too long to really get cooking, not fully igniting until the arrival of its third track “Dour Percentage”, which sounds like the product of a fictitious mid-‘70s collab between David Bowie and Todd Rundgren recorded in the house of Gamble and Huff. Alas, in another era it would’ve made a great single, and for that matter so would the song immediately following it, “We Will Commit Wolf Murder”, which combines the by now expected glammy atmosphere with Barnes’ appealingly Robin Hitchcock-like vocal inflection before the song redirects into a tidy techno showdown. And “Malefic Dowery”’s flowery music-hall pop actually feels somewhat in line with the post-Barrett pop-direction Hitchcock explored back in the second half of the ‘80s, though Barnes’ weirdness is more immediate, and the relative directness of the lyricism is not only different from Hitchcock’s but distinct from the looser imagery found on the rest of the album. From there the nearly nine minutes of “Ye, Renew the Plaintiff” is the gateway to the record’s more experimental second half, and it’s easily the most successful example of Barnes’ ambition on the whole set (it’s certainly the most rocking), it’s pivot point standing as one of the release’s high points.

Barnes has stated the influence of 20th century classical heavyweights like Penderecki, Ives and Ligeti on Stalks, and that’s enough for some snipey folks to bellow the “p” word (that would be pretension) in his direction. Not me. The record’s last three tracks all show a desire to unfurl into drifts of abstraction, and I’ll take Barnes word for it regarding the specifics of his inspiration. I don’t think he’s pretending, and I don’t think ambition (successful or not) is any kind of artistic crime. To the contrary, I welcome it, particularly in comparison to the disappointingly smoothed out and safe direction of 2010’s Of Montreal effort False Priest. I do however think that his flights of experimentation could’ve used some editing (or in the case of “Wintered Debts” a few of the more fragmentary song bits could’ve benefited from some expanding), for in the end the finished result lacks the depth required to sustain such a long chunk of the album’s running time.

Word on the street is Stalks’ “Exorcismic Breeding Knife” is getting likened to “Revolution No. 9”, and if so it’s the kind of wide open observation that can either be paid as a compliment or wielded as a putdown. I won’t deny it crossed my mind while listening, and that I dug the slight similarity. It’s also worth mentioning how that particular bit of Beatles weirdness was in large part just a crib upon John Cage’s Variations IV, so people eager to brand Kevin Barnes as pretentious should perhaps take that parallel into consideration. In no way am I equating Paralytic Stalks and The White Album in terms of quality, I’m just noting the similarity in tactics.

If the boldness of STALKS’ aims ultimately fall short, its second half is far from a failure, and in fact “Authentic Pyrrhic Remission”, the record’s closing and longest track at over thirteen minutes, actually is the most successful of the final three experiments, opening strongly and heading gradually for outbound territory before culminating with a sweet bit of melancholy piano balladry that shows off Barnes’ potential at stripped-down, straight-ahead songwriting. In the end the ambition of PARALYTIC STALKS registers as a sincere attempt at artistic growth rather than as folly, and in a contemporary music scene rife with acts well versed with playing it safe that’s a real breath of fresh air.