10 Music Reviews

The Airfields, Laneways (Humblebee Recordings)

Humblebee has done it again. Their first few releases (The Diskettes, State of Samuel) were lo-fi pop perfection; the Airfields fit in with their latest batch (Apple Orchard, Postal Blue) as C-86-inspired pop perfection. With nods to Black Tambourine (and by association the Jesus and Mary Chain), appropriately named bandleader David Lush and the rest of this Toronto band have crafted a tightly focused EP of tense dream pop. Like my favorite Black Tambourine songs, my favorite songs on Laneways ("Nowhere Left To Go" and "Tracks in Snow") are so good it hurts, and the rest aren't far behind. {mp3} - nadav carmel

Nat Baldwin, Enter the Winter (Broken Sparrow)

The first time I heard a song from Nat Baldwin's new album, I thought he was guesting on a Dirty Projectors track. Not because he isn't capable of making complex music like this- far from it- but because his previous performances and recordings have all been so sparse, featuring just the man and his upright bass, to resplendent effect. Rich and triumphant, Enter the Winter adds trumpets, cellos, and percussion to Nat's experimental bass-playing and near-operatic vocals, to even more resplendent effect. Parallels could be drawn to Andrew Bird, Tigersaw (with whom Nat frequently plays and whose Juliet Nelson appears here), and the aforementioned Dirty Projectors (with whom Nat also frequently plays and whose Dave Longstreth also appears here), or even Mark Hollis and Arthur Russell (whose incredible and heartbreaking Mark Hollis and World of Echo, respectively, everyone should own), but after hearing Enter the Winter, there's no mistaking Nat Baldwin for anyone else. - nadav carmel

The Bedroom Singer, Your Lover From Berlin (Yellow Mica)

Your Lover From Berlin is the debut CDr single by Swedish newcomer Erik Laquist, on the young but venerable Yellow Mica Recordings out of Gothenburg. This being a first effort, it's clear that Erik has room to grow, but it's also true that all Swedes are born with an innate and impeccable sense of the perfect pop hook. Like label-mate and fellow home-recordist Let's Be Honeys, the Bedroom Singer has pulled some charming lo-fi tunes out from under his bed, but balances them with a wistfulness and melancholy that belies his age. "Your beautiful mouth, I'm sure he kissed it," he sings on the title track, before making a silly couplet about a Swedish poet. The B-side (as it were), "That Old-Fashioned Song", dwells similarly in memory, recalling childhood escapism and adulthood nostalgia. In all, it's a promising start. {mp3} - nadav carmel

Dust From 1000 Years, Fever Dreams (So Hard Young Boy)

You'd never peg Bloomington, IN as perhaps the next Athens, GA, but from Friends and Relatives to Bluesanct to Plan-It-X, and tons of other labels and bands, some of the best experimental and lo-fi music has been coming from there for the last few years. Add to that category Dust From 1000 Years. Combining the backyard lo-fi of the Olivia Tremor Control, the miniature bombast of now-bands like the Arcade Fire or Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (minus the irritating vocals), and any amount of folk, indie pop, and even dreamy shoegaze (is there any other kind?), Fever Dreams deserves more than a just photocopy and CDr release. Hushed as it is, songs like "Whistle Thru the Fog" still gallop breathlessly, and the whole album's emotional scope is epic, xylophone and all. The band is perpetually on tour and the discs are cheap, so do everyone a favor and support these guys one way or another! - nadav carmel

The Extraordinaires, Ribbons of War (Punk Rock Payroll)

The first thing that you'll notice about Ribbons of War is that there's a good chance you got it from pirates. The second thing you'll notice is that you're now holding a beautiful cloth-bound, hand-screened, lushly illustrated book. With this much work going into the artifact (eight months worth!), you'd be excused for thinking the music might be an afterthought, but nothing could be further from the truth. On their last album- the sadly out-of-print IKUA- songwriter Jay Purdy had a knack for combining the personal and the anecdotal. For instance, "confusion / we never would have known / to think we let him in our home / we played Duck Hunt and we let him use our phone" captured perfectly the experience of being betrayed by a trusted neighbor. Lyrically, Ribbons of War is no less sharp, but focuses mostly on advancing the narrative, a doomed romance between a pilot and a sea captain and the irreconcilable differences that leave them both dead in the end. Musically, the album is most akin to the Decemberists, only with less contrivance because the whole thing is obviously fictitious, and more importantly, much more fun. Extraordinaires live shows even feature pirate costumes, props, narration, and projections. Every song is a mini-suite, yet doesn't feel rushed, and you can enjoy them one-by-one or as a cohesive whole; and every melody will stick in your head for days. It's definitely a rare achievement that every aspect of an album, let alone a rock opera, combines so well so effortlessly, but on Ribbons of War that's exactly what happens. That the album is still a pleasure to listen to is even rarer, and that it was made by pirates from Philadelphia, rarer still. - nadav carmel

Fiel Garvie, Caught Laughing (Words on Music)

Caught Laughing is just as spellbinding as Fiel Garvie's last album Leave Me Out of This, or perhaps even more so. The Norwich, England-based group has a truly distinct sound - a floating sort of dream-pop, but more structured than that implies. They're not making clouds, they're crafting songs. Their songs build and release, coalesce around remarkable melodies, and glide in the sophisticated manner of timeless balladry. There's a freshness, a brightness to their style, and at the same time their music is quite emotional, albeit in a somewhat indirect, not overly sentimental way. The lyrics, sung in a beguiling manner by singer Annie Reekie, find unconventional ways to communicate complicated feelings and stories. "It's a real life / it's so special / you had a special rate for me," are the album's opening lines - sweet, yet lines later the picture has become more complex, the 'it's a real life' line becoming more apparant as a mark of the divide between dreams and reality, romantic visions and pain. Dreams on the surface and hurt underneath is perhaps a common denominator among these songs, embodied by unfufilled wishes and dashed hopes, and built up as well by how they musically build a starry-eyed feeling of drifting into melodic pop songs. At the center of the album is the hook that lingers longest, Reekie singing gently "airsong so sad"... sadness and beauty commingle here, in fabulous ways. {mp3} - dave heaton

The Maybellines, A La Carte (Best Friends Records)

I'll be honest: I've always avoided the Maybellines. Their cover art up to now- teddy bears, large-eyed puppies- was just too cutesy for me. I feel the same way about Swedes the Shermans, but I suppose I'll have to reconsider. Anyway, the Maybellines have struck a perfect balance on this one: cute, smiling animal cutouts photographed on a faded sunny day. It matches the music perfectly and I can't believe I've denied it to myself for so long. There's only so much of one style you can listen to before getting burned out, and I'd just about reached that limit with twee. But it's albums like this that rekindle the romance and remind you why you listen in the first place. And it's been a while since my last reminder: the most recent album that made me smile so consistently was the Icicles' A Hundred Patterns about a year ago. Comparisons to Dressy Bessy are unavoidable (especially given both bands' Denver locale), but neither undeserved nor meant to imply that A La Carte is derivative. Far from it, as the variation on these six fantastic tracks attests. So I'm sorry Maybellines; can you find it in your hearts to forgive me? {mp3} - nadav carmel

7L & Esoteric, A New Dope (Babygrande)

I've always thought of Boston DJ-MC duo 7L & Esoteric as talented, but conservative - staying so close to a down-to-basics, keep-it-real hip-hop aesthetic that their music offered no surprises, and was overall rather dull. A New Dope is making me eat my words. The cover portrays them as boxers, and right from the start of the album it's clear that they've stepped their game up. "Get Dumb" opens the album with Esoteric rhyming over electro beats. It's a humorous update of "You Be Illin", a litany of dumb statements. Like most hip-hop innovators, they're looking backwards and forwards at the same time. So you have plenty of old-school/block-party style rhymes, plus a soundscape partially in debt to Afrika Bambaata and all of hip-hop's originators, but you also have unlikely samples (the Twin Peaks theme, that strange hiccup sound from Serge Gainsbourg's "Bonnie and Clyde") and unique moods (the church-organ-meets-porno sounds and comic book quotes of "3 Minute Classic", a whole host of spaced-out tracks). Esoteric is rhyming leaner, hungrier, and faster than ever, still using humor and wordplay while adopting a style of urgency and determination. Musically they're on a complete future, outer-space trip, and pulling it off amazingly, while lyrically the songs are grounded in the here-and-now, with sex, sports, music, and day-to-day life heavy on Esoteric's mind. But that's where hip-hop started, right? In the street but looking towards the stars... - dave heaton

Spoon, Telephono/Soft Effects EP (Merge)

Everyone loves Spoon's recent more streamlined, soul/pop-influenced albums, and rightfully so, but I still have a huge soft space (a soft crater?) in my heart for their earliest, more ragged rock music. Their debut album Telephono has been out of print for five years (who knew?), and now 10 years after its 2006 release Merge is doing the right thing and reissuing it, packaged together with its follow-up EP Soft Effects. It's the right way to reissue, I think, as each release has its original art intact, and neither has been fussed around with much (there's one video as a bonus). So what's here are the original releases, and this is the perfect time to experience them in all their glory. Telephono is a fantastic work of anxiety, surprise, feedback, and choruses that sound like riddles and are 100% addictive. It's '90s-style sing-out-loud, jump around the room, drive-fast rock n' roll, and at the same time steely and raw. Britt Daniel's unique sense for pop melody is here, but so is a particularly dynamic, messy sort of energy. And there's tenderness too, often lurking inside the strangest moments. The 5-song EP Soft Effects followed in much the same mold a year later, and still packs quite a punch. It opens with the tough, overwhelming "Mountain to Sound," but overall the music is more stripped-down and less fiery than on Telefono. Their warped style is being refined somewhat, without losing its appeal, as it would be even further a year later on their fantastic A Series of Sneaks album (still my personal favorite of theirs), and much further on the albums after that. {mp3} - dave heaton

Wan Light, Carmaline (Labrador)

I wanted this to be the next Mahogany album. It's not, but you can't fault it for that. Labrador Records is perhaps the headquarters of the clinical Swedish pop sound and aesthetic, and indeed it wouldn't be surprising to hear some of Carmaline's songs playing in your nearest Ikea, but you can't fault it for that either. The vocals are sometimes too similar to Wayne Coyne's and the music occasionally nods to, um, Pink Floyd, but otherwise Wan Light crafts shimmering, melancholic synth-pop that sounds mostly their own. Though it also falls short of high water marks set by label-mates Acid House Kings, the Radio Dept., and the Legends, the overall impression is of a blueprint for larger things to come. At best (the propulsive "Two Words Away" and moving single "That Grim Reality"), this makes for exciting listening; at worst (relatively) it's slick and good to shop to couches to, but no less enjoyable for it. {mp3} - nadav carmel