New Ruins – “The Sound They Make” (2007)

Just downloaded this from Emusic.  In many ways, ‘The Sound They Make’ is a little too cosily close to the acoustic guitars/rough-hewn harmonies, skeletal pedaled piano and cello territory that marks out so many ‘elegant’ Americana bands.  But when it’s done so well, it’s irresistible.  “Ships” kicks the record off at a deceptive rush.  “Your Ghost” might be almost too self-consciously ‘entrancing’ if it didn’t succeed so well.  The songs are uniformly short, sharp and to the point, reminiscent of Wheat in the hazy atmospheres they evoke. This one’s a keeper.

MySpace page

Quick round up – Deerhoof, Joanna Newsom, Coco Rosie and Colleen

No time for anything intense today.  So here are a few notes on what’s getting heavy rotation on my iPod at the moment:

• Deerhoof – “Friend Opportunity” (2007).  Yes, it’s quirky and yes, you never know from one second to the next where the tunes are going.  Put aside the Saidian issues with exoticising cute Japanese singers and revel in the loose as a goose strangeness of it all. Plus great playing, great lyrics (“If you were a dog and I were a man/I’d throw a stick for you”) and math-rocky poppiness.  The eleven minute epic concluding the set moves from west coast jazz through no-wave noise and clean skronk to breathy, relaxed resolution without a wasted note.  Don’t be put off by some of the press – this is an utterly accessible, delightful album.
• Joanna Newsom – “and the Ys Street Band” (2007).  One old song, one new (about cockles) and a drastically extended and re-tooled “Cosmia”, shorn of the Van Dyke Parkes Baroque strings but  including  some great banjo playing.  Essentially Joanna and her touring band taking a run at this and that with the benefit of hindsight.  Old  and recent songs re-imagined and re-invigorated and the new one  is equally delightful.
• I’ve been wrestling with three sample songs off the new Coco Rosie album (2007).   I’ll let you know.  So far, makes me think of Califone – admirable, complex, unique etc but kind of hard to love (extreme tweeness alert).
• Colleen – “The Golden Morning” (2005).  French ambient artist on the Leaf label.  Think Susumu Yokota but far more organic and emotive.  Eno’s “Day of Radiance” maybe?  Lots of (gasp) real instruments.  New album upcoming, can’t wait.

So am I so wrong about Coco Rosie?   I want to believe…

The Ponys – “Turn The Lights Out” (2007)

The Ponys are an unpretentious rock’n’roll band from Chicago and “Turn The Lights Out” is their third album. It’s fabulous. Great songs, clanging, garage-band production and awesome guitar solos. Twelve fierce little nuggets ranging from the Cramps-like stomp of “Everyday Weapon” to the “Day Dream Nation” riffola of “Poser Psychotic”. Along the way, “Small Talk” merges a little shoe-gazer shimmer without losing an ounce of this band’s power.

The trick is the utter clarity of the arrangements where those little details that make all the difference – a phased solo here, a chiming overdub there, the harmony that comes in at just the right moment – work to maximum advantage. Nothing outstays its welcome and every song has that kind of “play me again NOW” quality people pay that 4 None Blondes woman Goldman Sachs bonus-sized amounts of money for.

You want more highlights? “1209 Seminary” takes off in a rush of surf guitars and tremelo and keeps on accelerating. It’s a record of crescendos, not climaxes.

Matador has two mp3s up. Download them, marvel at the best guitar noise I’ve heard all year and go buy the album.

Blonde Redhead – “23″ (2007)

I’ve been looking forward to “23″ a lot but was a little worried about the involvement of Alan Moulder, responsible for some of the most generic productions of his day, said day being largely the late eighties/early nineties – shoegazer central, in other words. My first listen seemed to confirm my worst fears. Everything that marked Blonde Redhead off as a something different from the mainstream of the hazy dream-pop crowd seemed to have been buffed away. Title track “23” wafted in on a hazy of generically skittering beats, gleaming washes of guitar and Kazu’s high, just-this-much-short-of-a-squeak vocals. What followed seemed nice – the odd track stood out and I liked the electronic touches and flashes of white noise, the male vocals seemed much less irritating than on previous records – but it all seemed a little bit too easy.

Then I listened to it on shuffle by accident and it suddenly seemed like a different record.

The problem, I think, isn’t so much the production as the sequencing – there’s a clutch of perfectly marvelous pop songs, with a lot more dissonance and jagged edges than one might at first suspect but the record as whole is mixed and ordered so as to seemingly efface itself as much as possible. But start off with “Spring and Summer Fall” which marries a joyous pop hook with a classic Sonic Youth pulsebeat and some nifty harmonies and the record, despite the gauzy mix, kicks off in a whole new way. “Publishers” programmed beats and duet-style interactions between Kazu and Amadeo are lushly entrancing. “Heroine” is less of a progression from “Misery is a Butterfly”, sounding more like polite chamber pop than anything else. “Dr Strangelove” features Kazu at her most Gallic and affecting, though the arrangement seems to feature a disturbing amount of cowbells. “The Dress”, with it’s zither arpeggios and heavy breathing takes what could be an overly precious moment into three minutes of quiet menace and suspense.

So. Much better than a disaster then but not the headrush it might have been. It is, in fact, a very 4AD sort of record but not necessarily in a bad way. Think 60s cult movie soundtrack music, Jane Birkin and the Sonic Youth of “NYC Ghosts and Flowers” (look, that’s a much better record than everyone thinks it is). Oh, and produced by Alan Moulder. I’ve ended up listening to it a lot. Maybe I’ll even learn to live with the original running order one of these days.

Website – lots of Flash, of course. Very 4ad, y’know. The inevitable MySpace page.

Elk City – “Cherries in the Snow/Los Cruzados” (album tracks, 2007)

Advance download from their homepage plugging the just issued “New Believer” and from the Friendly Fire Elk City page in the case of Los Cruzados. Very pure power pop, pounding drums, strong but sweet vocals and clanging guitars…even tubular bells and “oh-la-la”s. 17 dots namechecks the New Pornographers and I’m inclined to agree. Fabulous guitar break and hook after pop hook -in fact, so many hooks, one almost forgets that the actual song gets kind of squeezed into a corner. “Los Cruzados” showcases Sean Eden (ex-Luna), the newest recruit and is a gorgeous Fleetwood Mac slink of a song, fronted by a singer who sounds like Debbie Harry always imagined she sounded.