Review: Victor! Fix The Sun - Person Place or Thing

Label: Friction Records

Released: October 20, 2009

Albums that rely heavily on noisy dissonance and angular rhythms as a means of expression seldom even dabble in accessibility, but Person Place or Thing, the latest from Michigan's mathy post-punkers Victor! Fix the Sun, is clear evidence of what's missing from that narrow view.

From the ringing guitar and wild, frantic drumming that opens the album, it's obvious that this isn't just another post-punk exercise. The album constantly soars on one hand while grounding itself at the same time and this tension is its energy. "We Come from the Northwoods" breaks free of its simple, agitated roots into an amazing progressive flight. Early on, "Blind Man's Bluff" gives a nod to CCR before turning the corner into a wild punk tune. The title track's hard rock groove tugs firmly on its frenetic undercurrent. The laid back bass line and mellow hooky guitar part on "Paperthin Feather Fuck" is in direct contrast to the raw emotion that drops in and out with masterful aplomb. "Infested, Mother Approved" has gentle layering and airy, trippy passages while the rhythm wraps it as tight as a straight-jacket.

Throughout, Victor! Fix the Sun shows an innate sense of where the songs themselves want to go and they follow that rather than leading and overthinking. Person Place or Thing follows a fine tradition of bands that use style and genre in the way other bands use instruments. Rather than taking the narrow road, they explore the broad vistas that view music without limits.

Don't miss this one on vinyl. It comes in either amber or maroon (the maroon is beautiful) and the album art looks great in its full 12 inches. A free download offers the best of both worlds, so you can't go wrong.

Ratings
Satriani: 7/10
Zappa: 8/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 9/10
Overall: 8/10

Myspace

Victor! Fix the Sun at the VFW (April 24th, 2009)
by lexen1

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Review: Thursday/Envy - Split

Label: Temporary Residence Limited

Released: November 4, 2008

Few albums start off with the level of frantic energy of Thursday's "As He Climbed the Dark Mountain." There are songs with fireworks and there are songs that are like the fireworks factory exploding and this is clearly the latter. Thursday's dense layering walks the fine line between noisy and melodic, without tempering either. On one hand it seems like one lumbering mass of guitar, yet at the same time, the music is intricate, interesting and downright riveting.

Envy makes an interesting pairing for Thursday. On one hand, their ambient textures walk the line between austere beauty and haunting fear in sharp contrast to Thursday's more heavy-handed approach. On the other, they blast out noisecore along the lines of a more musically mature Septic Death. In a sense they've taken the roads to both sides of Thursday's work, giving this split release not only intensity but depth as well.

Ratings
Satriani: 7/10
Zappa: 8/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

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Review: Women - s/t

Label: Jagjaguwar Records

Released: October 7, 2008

Some albums kick off with the strongest or most accessible song as a means of sucking the listener in. Others, ease their way into the real meat of the album so as not to scare the listener with their boldest material. But very few jump in with their most grating and difficult content. Women's self-titled album is, however, just one of those anomalies.

The album begins and ends with noise-fests that are not only difficult to enjoy, but difficult to discern the true value of outside the context of the album as a whole. However, between these near structureless bookends, there are songs that alternate between Women's dark, angular take on the Velvet Underground and their looser, more open nods to 60s psychedelia. Their travels between these seemingly divergent approaches is remarkably cohesive artistically. More remarkable still is how the more accessible middle of the album not only makes a case for the difficult start, but also sets up the manic ending.

Ratings
Satriani: 7/10
Zappa: 8/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 6/10
Overall: 7/10

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Review: Jonas Reinhardt - s/t

Label: Kranky

Released: November 10, 2008

This CD took me back to a sunny spring afternoon in high school, when the promise of summer vacation filled the air with excitement. I was driving down a little side street in Albuquerque when my friend Dave put on Poland by Tangerine Dream. I immediately made fun of Dave and his pretentious music, but even as I laughed, I got sucked into the hypnotic sounds. The music was uneventful on the surface, but if I paid close attention, I could hear every facet of the sound continually evolve into something completely new yet completely the same.

That Tangerine Dream CD opened a musical door I've never closed. I fell out of love with electronic music as it evolved into the vapid new age of the late '80s, but as club culture blossomed from the ashes of disco and the roots of house, I discovered the same layers of subtle excitement in virtually every stripe of electronic dance music.

It's neat to hear Jonas Reinhardt and be taken back to some of the deepest parts of my musical roots. Reinhardt understands what made the electronic music of the '70s and early '80s special. His compositions are subtle enough to fade into the background, but interesting enough to hold your focus if you choose to pay attention. Best of all, he knows the value of letting sound constantly evolve.

Unfortunately, he's not doing anything new. After hearing his debut, I went back and listened to Tangerine Dream's Phaedra and Klaus Schulze's Mirage; Reinhardt fits so seamlessly among them that it's difficult to tell where they end and he begins. Rather than using the past as a launching point for something new, Reinhardt merely imitates his musical forefathers.

There's nothing wrong with imitation, but unless it's combined with innovation, it's nothing more than nostalgia. When you consider how many great contributions have been made to electronic and/or experimental music over the past few decades by artists as diverse as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Paul Oakenfold, Einsturzende Neubauten, and Tim Hecker, it's hard to find time for someone who simply recreates the past. Even if he recreates it incredibly well.

Ratings
Satriani: 8/10
Zappa: 5/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 4/10
Overall: 6/10

Myspace

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Review: Christina Carter - Original Darkness

Label: Kranky

Released: October 27, 2008

The first time I listened to Original Darkness, I wondered what in the world I'd write about it.

Now that I've listened to the CD a half-dozen times, I wonder how I can possibly say everything I want to say within the confines of a record review. My notes alone are nearly 600 words, and they don't possess any of the flowery adjectives and thrilling verbs with which I mask my mediocre writing.

So I'll try to keep it basic. This is tough music even for me, and I like tough music. Original Darkness is full of very simple musical passages -- folky guitar chords, angular melodies, troubled vocals -- that aren't very interesting on their own, but Carter layers them together in counter-intuitive and unnatural ways. Mildly pretty components meld to become an ominous and anxious whole.

The end result sounds how depression feels.

No, it doesn't sound like The Smiths, or Belle & Sebastian, or whatever stupid emo band is hip this week. Those groups sound like confusion or sadness or anger. Original Darkness sounds like clinical depression, a state where everything -- the good and the bad, the soothing and the stressful, the light and the dark -- is inseparably mixed together. You can listen to Carter's music and intellectually say, "Wow, the vocal melody and guitar chords are kind of simple and pretty," but you cannot pull the prettiness from the pain that surrounds it. It's like being able to see the beauty of a sunrise or feel the tenderness of a lover's kiss, but lacking the ability to separate it from the destructive thoughts that cycle through your mind.

The CD is far from perfect. By the end of the disc, it sounds as if Carter is running short of ideas. Although her voice is reminiscent of Beth Gibbons or Jesse Sykes, at times she sings with an in-your-face earnestness that conjures the most overwrought and downright awful folksingers from the late '60s and early '70s. The title track reminds me of the way Nina Simone tried to convey dramatic emotion at the end of "Four Women," but instead just sounded kind of silly. There are more than a few moments on Original Darkness where Carter's emotion just sounds kind of silly. To her credit, though, she never resorts to Yoko Ono-esque wailing, a cliché that would make the record unbearable.

Lots of musicians can do simple feelings: Carter's greatest artistic accomplishment might be that her music embodies a mental disorder. If you're not afraid of rough edges and dark corners, this is a CD that I'd highly recommend. It likely won't become a part of your daily listening, but it will hang around the dark places of your mind for a very long time.

Ratings
Satriani: 4/10
Zappa: 9/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

Website

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Review: Teletextile - Care Package

Label: Self-released

Released: 2007



Ratings
Satriani: 5/10
Zappa: 6/10
Dylan: 6/10
Aretha: 6/10
Overall: 6/10

Website

Myspace

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Review: Tanya Tagaq - Auk ~ Blood

Label: Jericho Beach

Released: July 29, 2008

When I was 16, my parents took me on a trip out West. On that trip, we spent three days at the Grand Canyon. Oddly enough, it wasn't the most striking thing I saw on that trip, not because it wasn't amazing, but because it was just too much to take in at once. The beauty of the Grand Canyon was unlike anything I'd ever seen before, too much to be appreciated in three short days. Ever since, I've wanted to return to see it again and let it sink in. That's kind of the way I feel about Tanya Tagaq's Auk~Blood. There's so much going on and it's so unlike everything else that I can't quite get my head around it. And I want to return over and over.

The album is avant garde to the extreme. Tagaq is, after all, one of the only Inuit throat singers to work as a soloist. While throat singing is a vital part of her music, it isn't that obscure practice alone that makes Auk ~ Blood though. There are songs here, not just experiments or vehicles for her voice. It's not an easy listen, but there is definite substance and passion and emotion that is worth the time to discover. The two tracks featuring Buck 65 are certainly more down to earth, but even their hip-hop leanings don't exactly make this radio friendly. It takes time.

So often, experimental music loses its sense of song and its soul. Tagaq navigates successfully past both perils. These songs are out there on the fringes without a doubt, yet they're consistently cohesive, pushing to the limits without breaking down the structure into something entirely inaccessible. The songs have an emotional character, particularly evidenced by the conflict between desire and naivité in "Hunger." Perhaps it is the ancient tradition of which she is a part mixed with her experimentalism, but the album is at once primal and sophisticated. Even a guest appearance by none other than Mike Patton could easily slip by. Tagaq is simply good enough to assimilate him.

It takes time, but come back to see the strange beauty of this album grow. It's just too much to expect to appreciate all at once.

Ratings
Satriani: 10/10
Zappa: 8/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 7/10
Overall: 8/10

Website

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Review: Alive in Wild Paint - Ceilings

Label: Equal Vision Records

Released: March 18, 2008

"The sky was cold-fire sunrise, the clouds alive in wild paint, but all of it blurred in the dynamite crescendo."

These words from Richard Bach's Illusions not only give Alive in Wild Paint their name, but also their essence. Not only do they evoke soundscapes every bit as vivid as these words, but they also have the same seemingly divergent natures of peace and chaos. Ceilings is an album that relies more on piano and layers of ambient noise than it does on the brash guitar, bass and drums of a typical rock band. The first reaction is that they've tapped into Ok Computer-era Radiohead, but the deeper influence is perhaps the Church who created a similar ebb and flow of soothing yet moving noise surrounding an almost folky organic center. This organic, human element is what separates them from similar bands. It isn't until "Sleep With Your Soul In," the album's seventh track, that there seems to be any harshness in Celings, yet its gentleness is a strange one, more unsettling than peaceful. Alive in Wild Paint doesn't break a tremendous amount of new ground so much as they bring a new approach, one that takes something that tends to be overly clever and under emotional and rehumanizes it. Like the Bach quote, they describe things in a strange way that touches something beneath the intellect.

Ratings
Satriani: 8/10
Zappa: 7/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 7/10
Overall: 7/10

Website

Myspace

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Ryan Holiday - Gender Politics Vol One

Download Ryan's new album for FREE here. It's different...in a good way. Seriously, it's not going to be everyone's thing, but based on what I've heard, he could take a lot of people by surprise. A review will be coming soon.

Myspace: Bong Hits For Jesus

Taking their name from a recent free speech case decided by the Supreme Court in which a high school student sued the school system after being suspended for displaying a banner with this idiotic slogan, Bong Hits for Jesus have a bit of ground to make up before I even played the music. Granted their hearts are in the right place regarding free speech, but it strikes me as both sad and reassuring at the same time that our free speech advocates these days are people like this kid and Howard Stern and Larry Flynt. It's sad, because what they have to say is only worth protecting, because we can't pick and choose which speech is acceptable to protect. It's reassuring, because even in the days of the Patriot Act and the Iraq War, we can express political opposition. Granted there is some ebb and flow regarding these rights, but by and large, the free speech debate is often over things less serious than political speech because we value our political speech enough that it is still intact.

So going in, I expected some half-baked college jam band kinda fare. It didn't take long to figure out that I was way off base. They have five songs on their page, all of which make them difficult to categorize and none of which establish the band's "sound." A dark groove and crazy vocals characterize "Crack Baby." It's very loose and weird, avant-garde even, but not particularly technical. There are some cool psyche guitar leads that stand out. "Within an Inch" has a lighter, echoey sound and a decent guitar hook that gives it some promise. Still, it's a fairly messy song and suffers from poor production. BHFJ adopts a jazzy angle early on in "Your Mother." The song picks up a bit, but then breaks down into formlessness. Poor production is once again a problem. The mellow, raw, understated guitar of "Name of the Song..." along with considerably better vocals and production should make this their best track, but it's more conventional (even hinting at perhaps a Black Crowes influence) than the other tracks and suffers from that more than it benefits. As if they recognize that they've played it too safe, there's an interregnum of electronics and conversation followed by another song altogether. It doesn't really work as a single song, but I kind of respect that they'd rather screw it up than have it fit into a formula. That seems to fit their personality as a band. As if things couldn't be more disparate, "Comes From You" is practically synth pop. What's nice is that the vocals aren't very slick, so it has an odd organic sense about it. Interestingly, I bet this one is pretty cool live.

While BHFJ hasn't really cultivated a consistent sound, they have also avoided sounding like anyone else. I can see why they may be a fairly popular local attraction, because I suspect that their quirkiness is quite charming in person. Unfortunately, the songwriting isn't particularly strong and the production is poor which prevents that charm from translating to my car or my living room. That being said, I don't think they're a bad band, because they clearly have fun with their music and their commitment to being odd at the expense of being good (or what's accepted as good) is very rock n roll of them.