Oh good, glad to see you like my illustration. Yeah, I had some downtime and wasn’t feelin’ too creative or too much in my graphic design game as far as doing something special for The Decibel Tolls year-end list. So Lana and I started talking, and it came to us that it would be hysterical to do a collage with people like Bradford Cox eating that Ezra Comma dude from Frankenstein Weekday or whoever, and Franz Ferdinand… stuff like that. I didn’t have time to add Lil’ Wayne. And then I had to make, like, the fuckin’ universe as the backdrop. That’s how we roll here at the Decibel Tolls – no fun, tasteful graphic to designate this article as the accumulative best-of list. Nope, just crude images of artists I like with their heads detached eating shitty bands. I’m additionally thrilled that I was able to describe the image even further despite the fact that it’s already annotated. I rule.
I put some serious thought into this list, and did a bunch of narrowin’ down. There were other jam hives I was rather infatuated with this year, such as releases from Magik Markers, Burning Star Core, and Vivian Girls. But I wanted to do just the standard top ten this time around. No reason to not do things standard every now and again… Continue reading ‘The Decibel Tolls Best Albums of 2008′
You’re more than welcome, of course, to read my additional commentary on this matter, but if you just want the gist of it, all you need to know is that Hush Arbors‘ new eponymous record is a scorcher! It laid my ghetto blaster to waste.
I already expected Keith Wood’s (a.k.a. Hush Arbors) debut for Ecstatic Peace to valiantly score from the three-point line. I had a chance to see him play a great opening set for pal and collaborator Six Organs of Admittance circa late 2005, so I thought I understood what I was getting into. Turns out I was wrong. I did not expect Hush Arbors, just released Tuesday, to be a comprehensively destructive force of mysticism replete with melodic beauty and modal explorations.
Hush Arbors, as far as the whole freak folk/New Weird America thing goes (I begrudgingly use this term), has always struck me as the obvious choice for ambassador of the aforementioned movement, as he offers the perfect median point for the disparate sounds found therein. Wood’s take on psychedelic folk demonstrates that it is not necessarily his intent to destroy strong structures, nor is it his intent to play it straightforward and traditional. However, Hush Arbors has gone above and beyond comparison to similar artists. It’s no longer fair to say “this is a great offering from the New Weird America camp,” it’s only befitting to describe this self-titled record as a monumental collection of music that stands up against any album, anywhere. I’m not trying to overhype this really, but Hush Arbors rules so hard. Hush Arbors’ adventurous, wide-ranging sonic paintbrush invokes the past whilst thrusting the very notion of folk rock into future territories. In short, Keith Wood just dropped the type of album that separates the men from the boys. Continue reading ‘Hush Arbors Releases a Scorcher’
