The hiatus is over. The band is back. And no calling them "Dad Rock" this time out. "Ode To Joy" is largely about the sextet mining that groove once again. With Tweedy producing and writing, "Ode To Joy" feels like an extension of the introspective mood he started on "Warm." However, with the full band, they are eager to leave you reminiscing about both the sing-song sensibility of "Handshake Drugs" and the power pop of Badfinger in "Someone To Lose." Or the insistent almost Loose Fur-ish verses and "A Ghost Is Born" extended bridge of "Everyone Hides" combining to make you realize as long as Wilco just keeps going, they fill us all with “Joy."
CIty AND COLOUR
A Pill for Loneliness
(LP/CD)(Still/The Orchard)
Sometimes your career gives you an alternate path - that leads to your career. Dallas Green post-Alexisonfire has nurtured a huge audience for his swaying anthems of longing to fit in. While City and Colour has grown from acoustic confession to full-fledged lovelorn guitar Rock, "A Pill For Loneliness" is his first record to find a middle ground. "Astronaut" is intimately written but an anthemically performed. As it cools in the middle (behind its neat descending chorus), Green and his band give it an endless coda that feels as stratospheric as its name. "Strangers" combines his soulful voice with a driving pulse, while "Living With Lightning" proves the threadbare songs of old are now better with Jacquire King's shimmering production.
Join us at TBONES for a special LISTENING PARTY and we spin "A Pill For Loneliness" from City & Colour in its entirety, Friday, October 4th at 5PM.
BLOOD ORANGE
Angel’s Pulse
(LP/CD)(Domino)
Too much of this business is devoted to the immediate release of music. Whether it is under the guise of protecting the art from duplication or simply using it as a means to mainline it with excitement to the fans, much of the craft is lost in streams and tracks that are cherry-picked or tweeted about with gusto.
Dev Hynes newest project is jaw-dropping in both its execution and simplicity. "Angel's Pulse" is billed as a mixtape. However, it is more like flipping your radio around from station-to-station in search of that lost chord.
Where "Negro Swan" was broken apart by the distraction of its consistent talking between cuts, "Angel's Pulse" flows best where it is not supposed to. The restless Hynes is the most creative. "I Wanna C U" and "Something To Do" are swirling guitar-based love songs."Dark & Handsome (with Toro Y Moi)" is everything you could ever want out of our current infatuation with 80's production and R&B-based writing. "Benzo" is a darkly written R&B track made helium-light by background vocals and a beautiful horn part. The pure keyboard Soul of "Birmingham" is one you will long to hear in Beyonce's hands. After setting you up for the slow jam, Hynes drops the smooth (yet chaotic) "Good For You" up against the insistent beats of the Arthur Russell-sampled "Baby Florence" furthering your mood.
Like a lightning bolt, the dial switches to brutally honest Hip-Hop ("Gold Teeth"), serpentinely maneuvers back into evocative deep guitar R&B ("Berlin") and Indie Rock gone R&B with Tinashe ("Choose To Stay.") From here, it veers BACK into Hip-Hop with the low-fi "Seven Hours (Part 1)" and ends with the three most realized songs on the album. As you drift through "Take It Back, " Hynes snaps you back with "Happiness" and the benedictory "Today."
Truthfully ALL of these songs belong together in the same way we have all enjoyed "The Love Below" or "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill." Hynes may not be writing songs that echo the importance of those albums, however his ability to use his production to either change the mood of a track or create opposition or expose dichotomy in a cut is unparalleled. At a compact 30 minutes, "Angel's Pulse" begs for replaying and further analysis NOT cutting and pasting into playlists. While I am thankful we are receiving the physical release of this album now (two months after it dropped,) as you listen (and please do) one can only wonder about the impact the package would have had all together. With "Angel's Pulse," Dev Hynes has given us all a glimpse into the future of R&B/Hip-Hop.
OFF THE BEATEN PATH:
It's been a while since we drifted away from the mainstream. Think of these releases as both palate-cleanser and a tonic meant to boost your awareness of what is unusual within all of the vast palette of music that awaits you outside playlists and curation.
GRUN WASSER
Not OK With Things
(CS)(Holodeck)
Electronic music takes a real beating in a world of mostly Pop with EDM or Hip-Hop underpinnings. Fortunately, Coldwave artists like Boy Harsher and even the more confrontational Debby Friday find their way by pushing the limits. Chicago's Grun Wasser are honestly Pop. However, given that city's legendary history with Dance Music, "Not OK With Things" pushes in all directions at once. Background vocals are ethereal. Synth bass lines are propulsive. Drum beats gallop and vocalist Keely Dowd is multi-tracked to sound as Avant-Garde as Laurie Anderson ("Driving") or hypnotic and edgy ("Stranger's Mouth.")
TONBRUKET
Masters of Fog
(LP/CD)(ACT)
BLACK STRING
Karma
(LP/CD)(ACT)
From the German label ACT, this pair of imports beautifully skirt Jazz, Avant-Garde and even Electronic. Tonbruket features former members of the evocative Jazz group E.S.T. On "Masters of Fog," they push Jazz thrillingly close to the edge. Johan Lindstrom's guitar echoes the drama of Bill Frisell while Martin Hederos colors with keyboards you are not used to hearing. "The Barn" swells with buzzing acoustic guitars while the title cut features a breakdown that effortlessly moves from Keith Jarrett-esque piano to Italian horror synths to Metheny-esque harmonies.
Black String hail from Korea, where their ancient instruments are commonly in use. However, our ears are untrained to the silk-strings of the geomungo and the striking bends available on their zither. "Karma" is a brilliant mix of the familiar (they cover Radiohead's "Exit Music") and unfamiliar (the South Korean "Song To The Sea.") In the bed of reverb, the resonance of their acoustic Folk instruments are haunting. Add small touches of electronics, wordless vocals and dissonance and Black String deliver an experience like no other.
REISSUE OF THE WEEK:
The ELECTRIC BANANA
The Complete DeWolfe Sessions
(CD)(Grapefruit)
The secret history of the British Invasion will always circle around the fantastically underrated Pretty Things. While an early version featured both Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, once those two departed for another band, the Pretty Things would rarely follow in the direction they should. (With R&B music on its way out, 1966 saw the Pretty Things add horns and record "Progress.")
Their early songs were more hard-edged than most of the British Blues bands (the sneering "Rosalyn"), and they were always at the mercy of yet another personnel change. "Midnight To Six Man" is a furious shuffle and they were the first to record a song about "LSD."
Their psychedelic phase opened well before the others dove in, as hypnotic singles like "Talkin' About The Good Times" predated Pink Floyd and the rush to all things lysergic. From their leading edge, they even put together the first concept album "S.F.Sorrow" (unfortunately released in the same week as both The Kinks' "Village Green" and The Beatles legendary "White Album").
While working on its followup (the amazing "Parachute"), the constantly revolving band happened on an opportunity to make extra money recording "library music" for DeWolfe. These songs were written to be very overt and very commercial saw the band take on the nom de plume of The Electric Banana.
Behind the name, The Pretty Things were freed of any expectations and set on a course to make music that sounded very little like their own. On more than four albums from 1967-1973, they arranged all their tracks with vocals (Side One) and without (Side Two). What follows is scintillating Soul ("If I Needed Someone,") loose-limbed Country Rock ("'Cause I'm A Man) and psychedelic songs of all shades (Hard Rock like "Alexander," boogie rock like "I Could Not Believe My Eyes" and even a tribute to Jimi Hendrix in "James Marshall").
The Pretty Things kept rolling along merrily (and still do today) likely because they were given this strange avenue to experiment freely with music that actually attempted to sound like the rest. By the time band found a successful record deal (with Led Zeppelin's Swan Song,) they had waded into Glam Rock and AOR-friendly cuts, and the Electric Banana branch was shut down, leaving this chapter unrevealed until the late Seventies.
