No, summer ain’t over, but the kids are back in school, which means it’s essentially autumn. Des Moines, Iowa’s The Autumn Project and their post-rock sounds, then, provide us with our first assignment of the school year. Their 2003 LP Fable is a case study in the genre, full of monsterous guitar soundscapes and crashing cymbals. Their latest A Burning Light is darker and more focused, as demonstrated by doing a little compare and contrast between “Of Memorium” from Fable and the newer “Between the Smoke & Mirrors.” Five paragraphs, double-spaced. Due tomorrow.
Bel Auburn
Bel Auburn is a quintet from Ashland, an idyllic Ohio town some distance southwest of Cleveland. I say idyllic despite never having been there because the sweeping soundscapes that Bel Auburn have created are anything but ugly and uninspiring. In fact, these tracks, all from the band’s second self-released LP, Lullabies in A & C, are about as anthemic, emotive, and polished as you’ll find from a group of friends living off the cultural grid. It’s reminiscent of Coldplay or early Jimmy Eat World, the latter of which Bel Auburn claim as an influence. The lyrics can drift into codes known only by their author, but once a warm blast of guitar kicks in and Matt the lead singer lets go with a cathartic chorus, you’ll know exactly what Bel Auburn mean even if you have no clue what they’re talking about.
(Selected tracks are linked below; visit the Bel Auburn Website to download the rest of the album.)
North Valley Subconscious Orchestra
Medicine played in Memphis right before I got home from college one summer, but my brother Josh and our friend Andy saw them and even visited with them at the Admiral Benbow Inn (just recently demolished). They learned that Medicine’s wicked guitar feedback was achieved by running Brad Laner’s guitar through a four track and turning all the knobs up. We spent that whole summer trying to get a four track to mimic a distortion pedal with no success. Brad Laner, we determined, was a genius. Which is probably why I recently Tivo-ed the movie “The Crow,” just so I could see that scene of Medicine playing “Time Baby,” trying to get a glimpse of his guitar setup. Now Laner and fellow guitarist Christopher Willits, as North Valley Subconscious Orchestra, are releasing another feast of guitars on Ghostly’s digital download-only album The Right Kind of Nothing. More melodic feedback, anyone?
Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s
MusicalFamilyTree.com, a website dedicated to spreading the word about and sharing the music of Indiana bands, recently released the Delicious Berries compilation, and it is awesome. Fresh voices, ambitious sounds — I wish someone here in Michigan would tap into our local talent the way the MFT folks have. For my weekly posts in August, I’ll be featuring bands from the compilation, because it really is that good. The first, Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s, starts the disc, and with its deal on Artemis is likely one of the most commercially successful of the bands on Delicious Berries. The tracks below, full of quiet harmonies and pop hooks, are taken from their 2005 album The Dust of Retreat.
Spencer Dickinson
Ain’t nobody ever needs to doubt Jon Spencer and the Dickinson brothers’ blues. What they’re doing may be a tad less “blue†than the genre’s down-and-out Mississippi Delta roots, but Spencer, the brothers in the band and father Jim producing have been keeping the blues fresh (and let’s not forget Fat Possum Records) all of those years that your dad has fallen for those suburban guitar prophets with top-flight training and no sorrow. Granted, “That’s a Drag†is about as sorrowful as Spencer Dickinson’s blues get, but give me the sound of a night of hard livin’ over an AOR darling any day.
Peppertree
Summertime rules. And it’s got the best of the 3hive crew as we can’t seem to remember who’s posting when, who’s filling in for who when the latter who’s vacationing. But not even summer can stop us even while it’s trying to melt us all. New music everyday, or damn near close. Today’s selection is Peppertree: soaring, dramatic rock from Québec. A nice interplay between opposites (acoustic/electric, English/French, soft/loud) gives off an air of dramatic tension, without giving into overt thespianism. If you’ve been searching for Radiohead’s French Canadian cousin, you’ve found them.
Relay
Let’s get this straight from the start: the band named Relay contained herein is the one from Philly, not Delaware, Jersey, England, or (for cryin’ out loud) Utah. This Relay is a purveyor of shoegaze updated for the new millenium. Well, perhaps not that updated, but Relay are putting out some fine shoegaze in our current millenium, reminiscent of those shoegazer stalwarts from the early 90’s, Drop Nineteens (who were from Delaware, even though this is NOT the Relay from Delaware). Relay’s Type/Void EP is out on Bubblecore on August 8th.
The Hourly Radio
I get the same funny feeling in my tummy listening to The Hourly Radio as I did when I first heard Placebo. Or when I eat four packages of Ding-Dong’s then wash ’em down with a Big Gulp Coke. It tastes good instantly. I get all sugared-up and heady. But just like I keep putting away the Ding-Dong’s, I play The Hourly Radio over and over, singing along, straining to reach the high parts, and pulling off over-dramatic gestures as I pretend I’m on stage with the band. See, the problem is they’re catchier than any band should be allowed with lyrics teetering on the brink of cliché, and prance-along fun in that faux-British, just-this-side-of-pretentious way. You may think I’m being a bit flip . But I am serious. Just like Sam and I were dead serious dancing around to “Come Home” ten years ago in my basement. (Wait, I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about that was I??) Welcome to my new guilty pleasure.
Supersystem
Supersystem belt out saturated pop experiments that explode in a cacophony of colorful sound like homemade fireworks on the Third of July – y’know, because you’re too excited to wait for the Fourth. Any of these earnestly analytical numbers (“White light, white light!/what butterflies are made of!â€) is perfect music for kids in the gifted/talented program (is there still such a thing?) who just can’t stomach what Disney Radio is feeding them. Then there’s “Everybody Sings,†which, apart from being the most emphatic social outcast song this writer’s heard in a good spell, with its mega-dubbed chorus, vaguely surf-rock guitar and amped afro-beats takes current Top 40 sensibilities to a gleeful extreme. It’s like something that Justin Timberlake might record…if he was freakin’ awesome!
Snowden
Little did I know in my struggling years as a young(ish) shoegazer back in the early 90s that one day bands would be labelled “post-shoegaze” as a badge of honor. Atlanta’s Snowden have been given that tag, but there’s oh so much more to them than just that. Pop and rock are equal parts, and they use a special technique that my friend Mike G taught me after our band broke up many years ago. I was complaining about the stuff I was doing on my own, and his wise advice was to throw on more reverb and more distortion. The result was fantastic. Snowden have taken that same advice. Their debut album comes out August 22nd, and their EP can be downloaded from their website.