wordpress stats

Monthly Archive for May, 2009

[Bootleg] Black Moth Super Rainbow – Lexington – 5.19.09

black_moth_super_rainbow_3 [Bootleg] Black Moth Super Rainbow - Lexington - 5.19.09

The folks at the blog Pretty Creatures have a pretty good audience recording of Black Moth Super Rainbow’s tour kick-off show last week in Lexington. Pretty pumped for their show at the Southgate House in Newport on June 21st. Hope to see you there!  The rest of the tour:

Fri. May 29 Los Angeles, CA @ Troubadour w/ School of Seven Bells
Sat. May 30 Costa Mesa, CA @ Detroit Bar w/ School of Seven Bells
Sun. May 31 Phoenix, AZ @ Rhythm Room w/ School of Seven Bells
Tue. June 2 Austin, TX @ The Mohawk w/ School of Seven Bells
Wed. June 3 Denton, TX @ Hailey’s w/ School of Seven Bells
Thu. June 4 Little Rock, AR @ Sticky Fingerz w/ School of Seven Bells
Fri. June 5 Nashville, TN @ Exit/In w/ School of Seven Bells
Sat. June 6 Columbus, OH @ Skully’s w/ School of Seven Bells
Fri. June 19 Knoxville, TN @ Pilot Light
Sat. June 20 Birmingham, AL @ City Stages Music & Arts
Sun. June 21 Newport, KY @ Southgate House
Sat. June 27 Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop
Tue. June 30 Detroit, MI @ Magic Stick
Fri. July 24 New York, NY @ South Street Seaport – Seaport Music Festival, Pier 17
Sat. July 25 Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brendas w/ Dan Friel
Sun. July 26 Washington, DC @ Rock and Roll Hotel w/ Dan Friel
Mon. July 27 Baltimore, MD @ Ottobar w/ Dan Friel

MP3 :::
Black Moth Super Rainbow – Full Concert Bootleg, 5.19.09 (via Zshare)

Share/Save/Bookmark

WFMU is Broadcasting Primavera Fest Right Now

wfmu_logos1 WFMU is Broadcasting Primavera Fest Right Now

WFMU, the freeform radio station that is the manifestation of everything good in the world, is currently broad/webcasting the most excellent acts from the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona. Quite jealous, of course, that I cannot even fathom buying a plane ticket to Spain right now. However, I’m totally thankful WFMU has a high bandwidth stream to enjoy the likes of: Sunn o))), Magik Markers, Wooden Shjips, th’ Faith Healers, Yo La Tengo, Lightning Bolt, the Vaselines, Fucked Up, the Vivian Girls, the Jesus Lizard, Spectrum, Oneida, and more. Spectrum is playing right now.

STREAM :::
WFMU @ Primavera

Share/Save/Bookmark

An Epic Reader Comment

legendaryxb0 An Epic Reader Comment

Last Friday, The Decibel Tolls received one of the most epic comments I’ve ever seen on a music blog. This bro/broette had a lot to say concerning a rather controversial entry written back in September titled A Pox on Roger Waters. Coincidentally (or synchronistically, your pick), this argument against post-1971, Waters/Wright-helmed Pink Floyd was published only a few days before Rick Wright passed. I make no bones about my allegiance to Syd Barrett, and of course, I certainly expected impassioned responses in the thread. But our fair commenter left a novella. Since the aforementioned post is nine months old, I wanted to make sure all you dudes saw it by republishing the comment(s). But, I mean, shit, if anyone else writes a veritable thesis in the comments section, I’d certainly give him/her an entry of his/her own as well. The comments, unedited and in sequence, are below…

Ok, so, I checked out Summer of 68 for the first time, at your suggestion, and it sounds trajically like the Beatles caught the flu and collaborated with the Monkees and a garage band version of Chicago. I was surprised at how horrible it was, after so much hoopla and insistence that the old Floyd was so superior, from yourself and so many others over the years, and so convincingly so. Typed in “roger waters sucks” today in google, after watching his rubbish video called “Three Wishes”. It’s depressingly and awkwardly sucky, and it’s sad to see him as a grey-haired older man, still making reference to the fact that he “wishes his old man hadn’t been gone when he was young”, and admitting “I wish someone would help me write this song”. I bet you do, Roger. Gilmour, maybe? Mason? Funny thing is, Gilmour didn’t write his lyrics either, on his solo stuff, his wife did. Pink Floyd is a classic case of “the sum is greater than the parts”, as none of Gilmour’s solo stuff, as I call it, officially referred to as “Pink Floyd minus Waters”, was top shelf like some of the other stuff – The Wall, Dark Side (sort of) and Wish You Were Here. Funny thing is, I call them top shelf, but the common element in all the Floyd I’m referring to as “top shelf” is just Gilmour’s awesome guitar playing – he makes it wail like no other. But really when you dissect it, you find the songs themselves to be as you described – overly polished, and after you listen to them a couple hundred million times, they give you a f**** headache. The Wall was Roger’s attempt at self-indulgent rock opera, and so many people liked it probably because they felt like it must be good since it was so “different, and you know, man, it’s Pink Floyd”. Who cares. Gilmour’s guitar is awesome, Wright was great, Mason was great…Waters? Well, creative, but cheesily so, and I agree, unintentionally hilarious. Just my opinion.

Wow. Felt so strongly about this, I had to ammend my above post…I’m almost speechless, but I’ll try to get through this haze of disillusion and be coherent. I listened to the other tracks as well, Vegetable Man, and Astronomy Domine, and Nightmare is playing now as I type this. How appropriately titled, for starters. Again, wow. I feel like I just watched a low-budget horror film in its entirety with a friend who insists that it’s the greatest theatrical work of all time. With art, it’s all about what it means to you, and I can’t take that away from anyone, I’m just not seeing the significance of calling this “focused”, I think they may have been focused, but the result was not. Focused, in this case, is a relative term. I suppose if you are a person who likes seemingly random, pseudo-complicated, pseudo-creative ramblings that come off sounding like the b-side tracks from a Cream album, then this is genius work. I venture to say, that those of us who prefer something a bit more “standardized”, but definitely not overly so, as in the case of pure pop, or basically anything made since 1990 that calls itself “rock” somehow, aren’t necessarily missing the boat, we just don’t have the appreciation that you do for what seems like, well “a bunch of potheads fucking around in a (cheap) studio”. The more things change, the more they stay the same, maybe? In any case, if you can get over the fact that Alan Parsons “fucked with the knobs”, and stop thinking that Yes has anything to do with this at all, it’s good stuff. But then, even though Alan Parsons isn’t daily listening to me, more like an occasional speaker test (along with some other highly polished tunes from Dire Straits), it does have musical significance, especially with regards to high fidelity, which is personally important to me as well. Not at the expense of cheesy music, but there is something to be said for clarity. So, in summary, Pink Floyd is Waters/Gilmour, and especially Gilmour’s guitar. But then, I’m not as categorically conscious as some.

Embarrasingly needed clarification: when I said [In any case, if you can get over the fact that Alan Parsons “fucked with the knobs”, and stop thinking that Yes has anything to do with this at all, it’s good stuff.], “it” was referring to Pink Floyd with Gilmour and Waters, specifically The Wall, Dark Side, Animals, Wish You Were Here.

Ok, last post. That old Floyd stuff was so horrible, I think it actually ruined my day. It was so horribly boring and under-developed, like maybe the musical equivalent of a Michael Stipe lyric, but on lots of pot, that it just took away my focus. Now my head is filled with the endless draggings on of that Nightmare song, and it has taken me from alert to mind-numb. I guess the significance of the song is just that maybe? Makes you feel like either you already did drugs, or want to? I’ve had a few cups of coffee, and now even that isn’t enough to keep me clear after that, the effects have instantly wore off. Even more coffee will not change this feeling – it’s just stuck. Crap, I can’t think of anything that will ditch it. Time heals all wounds, as they say. I certainly hope so in this case. I’d hate to find out I just caught the Syd Barrett mental state. Maybe it’s contagious, comes from the music they were making pre-Wish You Were Here, and only those band members have the antidote. I may have to call upon Roger Waters for the cure. Nevermind, judging from the lyrics Waters wrote on his solo stuff, he finally caught it too. So did Gilmour – his face puffed up in the last 15 years, and his guitar playing definitely went downhill after The Wall. If anyone knows of a cure for this, please let me know.

I’m not sure if I caught all that – but yeah, totally dude. This is my favorite Syd Barrett song – I hope this helps.

MP3 :::
Syd Barrett – No Good Trying

Share/Save/Bookmark

Amen Dunes – DIA

511jcGO4yrL._SS500_ Amen Dunes - DIA

More and more artists are paying homage to Thoreau lately and recording their music in the midst of a hermetic retreat. And while most return with nothing more than a bruised ego and a full beard, every now and then they stumble back with something personal and articulate enough to rattle the ears of unsuspecting strangers. Damon McMahon, working under the name Amen Dunes, made a similar pilgrimage in 2006 to the Catskill Mountains to record what would become his debut album DIA. Both insular and cavernous, this debut LP is an uninhibited trek through McMahon’s psychedelic mind-scapes.

The album opens with the raw, dirt-in-the-fingernails garage rock of “Amen Dunes,” a successful throwback to 60’s style surf and distortion. Through his spidery reinterpretations of classic rock that has a tendency to take some noise detours, Amen Dunes fits somewhere within the vintage-minded acts like Crystal Stilts, and the clamorous sermons of Pumice and the New Zealand scene. But in the end, McMahon seems most at home cooking up spaced out lo-fi folk with just the right amount of static kindling. “By the Bridal,” is a drunk and driving ballad that plays a little bit like a cannibal-fruit-era Modest Mouse, but it’s a driving ballad that’s been thoroughly sunburned and then dunked in a bucket of reverb. Other highlights from DIA include “White Lace”, which effortlessly transitions from a folk song into a mountain of tape layers and effects, and the closing hymn “Breaker”, that pairs a muffled organ to a naked wailing vocal piece.

DIA is available now through Locust Music, and is highly recommended.

MP3 :::
Amen Dunes – By the Bridal
Amen Dunes – Amen Dunes

Share/Save/Bookmark

Ducktails Aim to be Your Summer’s Soundtrack

l_83cc0a966856bf9b82f68f4fa7d77f58 Ducktails Aim to be Your Summers Soundtrack

Ducktails is the solo project of Matthew Mondanile (Predator Vision, Real Estate). The debut self-titled LP is composed of econo-ambient works largely built from hazy guitar jams and blown out Casio swirls over tropical tape samples, producing some Pete and Pete era psychedelic nostalgia. The unique sound is inferred to be a stew of both his early exposure to the Beach Boys and a recent stay in western Mass where Thurston Moore and a few others flood the scene with noise and free jams.

The album has a lulled but not quite hypnotizing quality, similar to the nature documentary sound that Boards of Canada achieve, with occasional lo-fi tape tinkering like on “Backyard,” with its phased bucket-toms and Robert Fripp inspired distortion shifting in between. Nods to lable-mates Pocahaunted and Sun Araw are scattered about via Mondaile’s agenda to strike a balance between pop and drone music, like on the summer bookend “Dancing With the One You Love.” With much of the big releases belly flopping so far this year, I’m putting my money on the understated charmers like this album right here.

Ducktails is available on vinyl from Not Not Fun (edition of 600, so act fast!). Mondanile will also be touring as a grab bag of his many forms in US this summer, starting June 12th as Predator Vision in Brooklyn and working his way around the East Coast.

MP3 :::
Ducktails – Dancing With the One You Love
Ducktails – Backyard

Share/Save/Bookmark

Black Moth Super Rainbow Drops Today

51EG34wx39L._SS500_ Black Moth Super Rainbow Drops Today

Eating Us is out today. Go grip that shit! I wanted to go on and share my review originally written for LEO Weekly and was recently nixed and reworked for a bigger, more awesome full-page feature we’re doing coming in the next couple of weeks:

Black Moth Super Rainbow performs a difficult feat with Eating Us. The group is able to maintain the distinct, calculated sound that makes them easily recognizable while branching out to create a remarkably different album. The massive arsenal of antique analog equipment that defined BMSR’s first three albums remains in tact – the vocoder-saturated vocals of Tobacco, the thick and swirling novatrons and mellotrons that cultivated a general feeling of sunshine and old 8mm films about nature, etc. However, Eating Us showcases a more organic band, incorporating more acoustic instrumentation and mellow moods without disregarding the group’s traditional glitchy, Technicolor timbre. The syrupy strings that producer Dave Friddman fine-tuned on the Flaming Lips’ latter output makes its way onto beautiful floral pop gems like “Fields are Breathing” and the cinematic “Gold Splatter.” The expansive “Smile the Day After Today” sounds like the music Boards of Canada should’ve followed up Geogaddi with, but failed to. In short, Eating Us is a gorgeous, cohesive, enthralling, brain-melting psychedelic package – a record of remarkable imagination and accessibility that will unequivocally enjoy a very high place on my best of ‘09 list.

Fagen-Becker Quality Rating
steelydan1 Black Moth Super Rainbow Drops Today

Don’t forget to check out our interview with Tobacco here, as well as some concert photos from our friends at Backseat Sandbar who went to their tour kick-off show in Lexington last week. I’ll be heading to the Southgate House in Newport (best venue in the world) to see them rip June 21st? Anyone else going?

MP3 :::
Black Moth Super Rainbow – Iron Lemonade
Black Moth Super Rainbow – Fields are Breathing

Share/Save/Bookmark

Rain Parade, Where Have You Been All My Life?

rainparade Rain Parade, Where Have You Been All My Life?

I recently started exploring the realms of what was known as the Paisley Underground, a movement mostly around Los Angeles in the early to mid ’80s that acted as a reaction to the machismo of the hardcore scene percolating at that time. The groups involved in the Paisley Underground (a moniker that, like punk, was meant as a joke) wanted to spread peace and love again through candy-ass rock and roll. Some very incredible albums came from this movement, and not all were specific to LA (Soft Boys and Big Star come to mind). While The Dream Syndicate and The Three O’Clock probably championed the scene the most, The Rain Parade’s austere yet lavish 1983 album Emergency Third Rail Power Trip is my pick of the litter. This album rips.

If “I Look Around” sounds familiar, The Asteroid #4 covered it last fall on These Flowers Of Ours. Jangly, lush, gorgeous – Emergency Third Rail Power Trip is unrelentingly powerfully, probably because it’s the perfect balance between two significant movements in rock – ’60s psych, and C86 dream pop. “This Can’t Be Today” is the type of unequivocally perfect, slightly askew pop song that makes everything else sound shitty. Everything. I mean, really, after hearing a song so flawless, it makes me want to go find the members of poppycock groups like Passion Pit, roundhouse kick ‘em in the domes, steal their money, and donate it to the formers members of the band. While The Rain Parade never saw much commercial success before their split in 1986, vocalist David Roback went on to form two other excellent bands – Opal, and the mighty motherfuckin’ Mazzy Star. So Roback still got real paid in the end, I suppose.

Though Rain Parade’s original label, Restless, is no longer around, Ryko still distributes Emergency Third Rail Power Trip, but not widely. Hence, if you don’t live near a rather large record store, your best bet is to grip it through Amazon. Which you should. Amazing that there was a time when indie rock didn’t suck, yes?

MP3 :::
The Rain Parade – This Can’t Be Today
The Rain Parade – 1 Hour and 1/2 Ago
The Rain Parade – I Look Around

Share/Save/Bookmark

Sir Richard Bishop – The Freak of Araby

l_172affed1ea4433ba539d45aa7e61267 Sir Richard Bishop - The Freak of Araby

I had the privilege of enjoying Sir Richard Bishop’s opening set for teh Animal Collectivez during the spring 2007 tour when they premiered just about all of Strawberry Jam. The audience seemed to listen and enjoy the music, despite the fact no one was actually looking at him on the stage. It was odd, but understandable – unless you’re a guitar player yourself, the versatile guitar maestro and ex-Sun City Girl is just a bearded bro sitting down and noodlin’. However, if you’re one for tonality and next-level musicianship, the richness of his international musical vernacular, shifting modalities, pure dexterity, and evocation of ominous spirits through a Peavey amp at 120 decibels was a fucking shamanistic thing to experience.

Sir Richard Bishop’s latest, The Freak of Araby, is, as you could probably glean from the name, straight outta the Ottoman Empire. Most songs tend to air on the sparse side, which is as much for utility as mood – the tempo changes so often that very few percussions could probably keep up with the knighted one. When the rhythm does drop, though, the results are the best example of truly hypnotic music. The gypsy psych of “Kaddak El Mayass” and “Sidi Mansour” is a burgoo of eastern traditionals and western composition so seamless that David Byrne should probably feel retarded if he heard this. While The Freak of Araby offers no change of direction from earlier Sir Richard Bishop releases, his conceptual yet tangible explorations across desolate soundscapes and past (or possibly) parallel worlds are so unique that Bishop has placed himself in a position wherein he need not reinvent himself to sound “fresh.”

The Freak of Araby is out today on Drag City.

Fagen-Becker Quality Rating
steelydan2 Sir Richard Bishop - The Freak of Araby

MP3 :::
Sir Richard Bishop – Kaddak El Mayass
Sir Richard Bishop – Sidi Mansour

Share/Save/Bookmark

Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest

veckatimest Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

Our first taste of big things to come was the live-debuted “While You Wait for the Others,” which tipped us off to several shifts occurring in the Grizzly Bear control room. The arraignment felt comparatively sparse, focusing largely on texture, and the pace seemed much more motivated. Indeed, at least some of the culture shock that comes with the first listen to their third album Veckatimest is in part due to the changes in the instrument palette. Still with us are the splintering guitars, gossamer vocal harmonies, and dark bass heavy strings, but the woodwinds and other orchestral ammunition are largely forgone in favor of a more economical rock band, and after several listens through, it’s still hard to pin down the group’s intentions. One part of me finds these 12 tracks to be fascinating attempts to derive monumental results from a modest four-piece set-up, but the creeping alternative reality is that of a band whom, approaching the release of their make-or-break with the mainstream album, have constructed an airtight vessel to carry themselves through the transition at the cost of the human, fallible elements that gave Yellow House its haunting presence.

Veckatimest opens as a pretty natural sounding progression with “Southern Point”. It’s sufficiently disorienting, and has a jazzy departure that compliments Dan Rossen’s locomotive picking, but the swells and crashes feel strangely fixed, grasped tight by some omniscient puppeteer. These tracks, while gorgeous as ever, swing straight for hook with heat-seeking melodies, and without the patience exemplified on earlier efforts, the ecstatic focal points of this album feel less deserved. One example is the hair-rippingly dull “Two Weeks”, an awful rock-hop that if released by any other band would be looked upon as mediocre. It’s inherently rigid structure is somewhat complimentary to Ed Droste’s lead vocals, but hardly to Dan’s, which feel extremely awkward against the rising tempo and forced pop posture. Sure, the singles like this are pretty and nicely wrapped, but so what? It feels like lazy perfection. All the turns are cornered, almost quantized, and in this new songwriting prowess that they exhibit, listeners gain a faith in Veckatimest that can quickly translate to boredom. Yellow House, and even Horn of Plenty to a degree, were fairly unpredictable listens, and in that way they were exciting no matter how many times you heard them. Now, with the obvious divide in creative control between Rossen’s loose folk tendencies and Droste’s secret desire to turn the sepia-toned period piece pop that he helmed first on “Knife” into a caricature of itself, it all feels uninhabited, and leaves only the faintest impression after you lift the needle off the record.

grizzly-bear Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

Now, with that in mind, it is safe to say that Veckatimest also holds some of Grizzly Bear’s most accomplished work. In many ways it is comparable to Merriweather Post Pavillion, “About Face” sounds directly influenced by Sung Tongs era AC, but the two are also very similar in terms of how they stand in context with the earlier releases. The production of the entire album is impeccable, and relishes in that undeniably classy sound that these boys have staked out for themselves over the past two albums. “Fine For Now” is simply stunning. The glass harmonics of the guitar and the tumbling bass form a flexible interplay that cruise sublimely into Rossen’s gentle refrain of “We’re all faltering/How’d I help with that?/If it’s all or not/Just let me go”. There are even a few case’s when Veckatimest succeeds in it’s dash towards a large-venue sound, like on “Ready, Able” which somehow manages to strike a compelling contrast of rollicking palm mutes and chamber-pop furnishing that builds palpable tension, giving the bridge that Je ne sais quoi which proved unattainable on many other attempts. “Dory” also makes good on its potential with an infectious bent melody and warped vocal harmonies that sound alien and almost reach for the paranoid splendor of recent tour mates Radiohead.

The somber closing piece, “Foreground”, punctuates Veckatimest in a similar way that “Colorado” did for Yellow House. It sounds tired, defeated, humble, in awe, and ultimately cathartic-if only they’d recorded all the songs in the same way. On its own, it’s a gut wrenching song, but it hardly summarizes the preceding experience, which has diminished into vapor trails by the time we arrive at the end. Though the album is not a wasted effort, housing both their most ingenious and bland arraignments, it is impossible to overlook the void of adventurous nature. Veckatimest is entirely confident in its form, strategy, and aesthetic, but with the self-imposed safety-parameters, it fails to allow itself to really breathe, and in the end, permits us only glimpses of the ghost in the machine.

Veckatimest is out now on Warp Records.

Fagen-Becker Quality Rating
steelydan3 Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

[Editor's Note: Grizzly Bear has gotten so big that they now return a higher rank in a Google search than the animal grizzly bear. Day-amn. Oh, and dudes, have you seen Werner Hertzog's Grizzly Man? Dude lives with big fuckin' bears (not the band)! Crazy!]

MP3 :::
Grizzly Bear – Dory
Grizzly Bear – Fine For Now

Share/Save/Bookmark

The Best of Swirlies

61adnfeydgL._SS500_ The Best of Swirlies

Continuing the Contraband series, showcasing various finds and older, often out of print, records that deserve some ink in the blogololosphere, today we discuss Swirlies and three albums – Blonder Tongue Audio Baton, What to Do About Them, and They Spent Their Wild Youthful Days in the Glittering World of the Salons – all of which are very worthy of your attention.

Swirlies served as a Yankee response to the Thames Valley-centric shoegazing movement, though it could still be argued that Swirlies didn’t necessarily fit nicely in that box either. The group masterfully amalgamated both dream and noise pop aesthetics like champs, while also pioneering what was known as “chimp rock,” or music with a deliberately childlike, uncouth approach to songwriting.  Though they’ve not done a whole lot in more recent times, it’s worth noting that Swirlies never officially disbanded. As a matter of fact, they recently resurfaced to play three east coast shows in February.

What to Do About Them, released in 1992, is rather cohesive for a debut EP. Under the soundboard-clipping washes of noise is a touch of bubblegum pop that carved a niche for Swirlies as America’s The Vaselines. Dig the sweet and sour “Chris R” and anthemic “Upstairs.”

24c5c060ada055dd040d0210.L The Best of Swirlies

Blonder Tongue Audio Baton, released in 1993, maintains the typical cadence and aesthetic of the time as a freewheeling, sloppy recording. One important distinction, however, is Swirlies’ mastery of the quiet/loud dynamic. Songs like “Bell” have a real Ride quality in terms of soaring melodies and silky guitars – minus any sort of production, of course.

61fvRZOYY1L._SS500_ The Best of Swirlies

While Swirlies’ 1995 album They Spent Their Wild Youthful Days in the Glittering World of the Salons is still in print, it isn’t widely released, discussed, or revered, and that’s an abject bummer. Compared to their noisier, more disjointed previous releases, …Salons features cleaner production and more sophisticated, concise songwriting, ostentatiously because it is, indeed, a latter album and the members are older, etc. However, the band proves they still don’t give a shit by way of their classic muddy, brutal distortion. The liner notes state that no synthesizers have ever been used in Swirlies, making some of the sounds scattered on “Sound of Sebring” over the ’90s-centric, tinty, active rhythm quite curious indeed.

MP3 :::
Swirlies – Upstairs
Swirlies – Chris R
Swirlies – Pancake
Swirlies – Park the Car By the Side of the Road
Swirlies – In Harmony New Found Freedom
Swirlies – Sound of Sebring
Swirlies – Sunn

Share/Save/Bookmark