Will Kimbrough
Americanitis
Emergent / 92e
originally published November 1, 2006
My favorite albums have always been thematic (the Kinks, Neutral Milk Hotel), and the latest from Will Kimbrough is no exception. Americanitis is Kimbrough’s second solo album, but he has an impressive resume as a Nashville producer, Todd Snider/ Randy Crowell collaborator and rocker. Americanitis’ subject matter is an exploration into the chronic tension/ mindset of we harried Americans, and Kimbrough doesn’t speak with rhetoric, but via his values.
Part of Americanitis’ appeal stems from the wide variety of genres tackled by Kimbrough: rock, ragtime, blues and country all make an appearance on this all-American album. Kimbrough also possesses the ability to assume the mindset of a wide variety of Americans: corrupt businessmen ("I Lie"), grown-up playboys ("Grown-up Now") and the average American ("Act Like Nothing’s Wrong"). But Americanitis isn't oppressive. Kimbrough is too gifted of a producer to create a downer, and lightens the bitterest topics with lyrical humor and musical insouciance. The keyboard’s triplets in "Life" take away the sting of Kimbrough’s rumination on global warming.
The native Alabaman captures the complexity of being raised a “good Southern boy, bred to keep his opinions to himself” in the power-pop gem "Less Polite," whose opening stanzas cross my mind each morning as I alight the Oconee Connector on the way to work: “I’m trying to be less polite / I’m saying what I really think / the president’s a fool / I don’t want to get up early / and I wish I had a good stiff drink.”
The Mountain Goats
Get Lonely
4AD
originally published November 1, 2006
John Darnielle (singer, songwriter and, until recently, sole member of The Mountain Goats) has earned a deserved reputation as one of the best lyricists in rock, but his music has largely been functional, a vehicle for his lyrical short stories. His propulsive acoustic strumming, joined on early albums by the tape hiss from the boombox on which he recorded his songs, was as "acoustic singer-songwriter" as it gets, though a particularly forceful example of the form. But on the last few Mountain Goats albums, as the production has gotten cleaner and more sophisticated, and Darnielle has been joined by a full band of sympathetic collaborators, his songwriting has become as complex and interesting as his lyrics.
Get Lonely doesn't have quite the cathartic emotional heft of last year's The Sunset Tree. That album, a blistering but at times achingly lovely exorcism of the demons from Darnielle's relationship with his abusive stepfather, was probably the peak of what The Mountain Goats could accomplish in its most recent incarnation. Get Lonely feels like a retrenching, the sound of a band figuring out where to go next, of a songwriter learning to rely on his friends (title notwithstanding). Darnielle still has a gift for the telling narrative detail ("I lay down in the weeds / it was a real cold night / I was happy until the overnight attendant / switched on the floodlight"), but the lyrics continue in the first-person vein of those from The Sunset Tree, though with less childhood-memory specificity; when Darnielle employed the first person on previous albums, it was frequently in the plural, marking the speaker as part of a group of likely fictional characters. Now the "I" is the centerpiece of every song, and there's the sense that Darnielle is figuring out how to treat himself as a character the same way he used to deal with death-metal bands and running backs.
Musically, though, Get Lonely is probably Darnielle's most musically accomplished album. It has a lot of atmosphere, which is the first thing you notice when initially listening to the album; the songs tend to run together, a smear of minor-key guitars and strings. It's on subsequent listenings that the details start to jump out and define the songs: the ominous cello in the chorus of "Maybe Sprout Wings," the woozy, spectral guitar snaking through "In the Hidden Places," the roiling percussion and jazzy bass of "New Monster Avenue," the dense rhythms and funeral-band horns of "If You See Light."
There's a real danger that all of this could sound too "tasteful;" there's no denying that the rawness of Darnielle's early recordings is part of their appeal. But Darnielle keeps Get Lonely from descending into Adult Contemporary blahsville by emphasizing the spontaneity of the live recording and the intimacy of the lyrics and vocals - his voice is so clear and close that it sounds like he's right next to you, whispering the songs in private concert. The connection between singer and listener - the feeling that you're the first and only person hearing these stories - has always been present in The Mountain Goats' work, and that, at least, hasn't changed at all.
Long Legged Woman
1
Independent Release
originally published November 1, 2006
Eschewing the jittery, Television-inflected post-punk of now-defunct local outfit American Erutrevo for a devastating recipe of booze and blues, Gabe Vodicka and Justin Flowers have hatched one of the most gnarled and gnarly creations of recent Athenian vintage. This five-song debut CD-R marks Long Legged Woman as the first local group to riff on the Hawkwind-descends-to-hell stylings of psych revivalists like Comets on Fire and Major Stars.
The fellows recorded these jams live into a Sony boombox recorder, though, so the results are far too blasted and subterranean to compare directly with any similar albums, of which there are more than six dozen or so in existence. In spite of the scuzz and unidentifiable trebly debris, we still get remarkably fleshed-out eruptions like “Long Legged Woman,” which runs classic-rock boogie through a post-industrial DIY gristmill. Flowers attacks his kit like John Bonham covering Throbbing Gristle, while Vodicka rides a raunchy guitar figure through a brick wall of grimy textures, sinking into a third-eye-opening groove and transcending his gristly surroundings.
As with many contemporary noise-rock transmissions, you could easily speak at length about this album’s cultural ramifications, mapping connections between trash and art, guitars and phalluses, hedonism and nihilism onto these songs, and you’d probably raise a number of legitimate and compelling points. But you’d also be guilty of approaching 1 with much less of a grin than the dudes who made it.
A.Armada
A.Armada EP
Independent Release
originally published November 1, 2006
Well, I'm already biased. It's so nice to hear a local band falling into the post-rock degree program but without seeking a double-major in math. That's not to say A.Armada is four frat boys who cut algebra class, but there's a refreshing taste of widescreen grandeur here that the typical math-rock outfit rarely even attempts. The debut EP does offer a smattering of polyrhythms and fairly complex time signatures across its six tracks, but it takes a back seat to the sheer joy of driving.
The obvious touchstones here are Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Explosions in the Sky. Particularly in the finger-picked guitar lines, often emulating that soaring screwdriver style that Godspeed guitarist Efrim has made famous. The band wisely minimizes the soft/ loud dynamic that so many post-rock bands fall prey to over and over (and over and over) - this is a lesson Mogwai could learn. Opener "Chin Up on the Black Screen" is A.Armada's most immediate and fluid track here; just imagine Do Make Say Think's jazzy take on bombastic rock and throw in cresting cymbal rides and an almost-locked groove. "Throw Back Their Heads and Howl" takes this lead and shifts down the tempo, injecting a laid-back mood. "Metal {a Better Conductor}" is rooted more in American soil, mining the richly complex vein of Don Caballero and even the trigonometry of Tortoise.
"Albatross," however, is just that, hindering my opinion as the track closes the album. Revving up the technicality and thus threatening to render this review's opening lines less accurate, I'm thrown for a loop momentarily. But more martial drums drop into the mix, the guitar goes all panoramic, and we're saved.
Tim Hecker
Harmony in Ultraviolet
Kranky
originally published November 1, 2006
Recently, I claimed that Chris Herbert's just-released record Mezzotint was "the finest of its ilk since Fennesz's Endless Summer." It was a hard statement to make, specifically because of Tim Hecker. Discussing textured ambient music is tricky territory. Since Fennesz's landmark release Endless Summer, Tim Hecker has produced three full-length albums that sit at the apex of the genre. And now comes a fourth, Harmony in Ultraviolet, and it perhaps outshines his already formidable catalog. But back to splitting hairs. While many would immediately throw all three into the same barrel, I maintain that there is a subtle yet vast difference between the processed guitar language of Fennesz and the ambient noisescapes of Hecker. It's mostly about flow, and to answer any furrowed brows, I believe that Herbert is distinctly more Fennesz than Hecker.
The Canadian-based Hecker has followed up 2004's magnificent Mirages with a more accessible and successful set. Harmony in Ultraviolet continues with his explorations of distantly rumbling bass, sculpted noise and drifting ambient tones, but this time out, he has refined and focused his sound into sheer beauty. It's so much more than the sum of its parts. "Dungeoneering" is probably the best thing he's ever produced, a concise distillation of Growing's power, Godspeed's bombast and Brian Eno's drift. The build and climax are fantastic, and there's still time left for a heartbeat to ease into the next track.
Harmony in Ultraviolet is essentially one perfect Joyce-esque loop, best absorbed in one sitting. "Blood Rainbow" ends the record in a beautiful haze, wrapping around to the opener "Rainbow Blood," which serves as an intro to track two. The album is the closest thing to infinity in some time.
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