Rob Crow’s pipes are one of the most readily identifiable traits of perennial easy-listening indie rock favorites Pinback, but the band’s strengths in its rhythm section and steady plodding melancholic style have kept his real fantastic riff writing and catchy hooks from shining through. It’s only been in his more experimental home recordings and side projects that he’s focused his compact rough-edged rock-pop into songs that max out at roughly 2 minutes and pack all their ideas concisely into undeniably memorable bursts. Some of his strongest writing has been with Thingy, in which he paired his own silky vocals with harmonies from a female counterpoint, and featured the drumming of my personal favorite Mario Rubalcaba from Rocket from the Crypt, and Clikitat Ikatowi. The band is wound insanely tight, and the sometimes frivolous lyrics give their albums a breezy and humorous tone (see their acoustic ode to Star Wars “O.B.1″, one of his many dedications to the series), but on darker songs like “Blueprint” and “Letterbomb” the tightness of the band, though evidently catchy and refined, can leave you breathless. There isn’t a better pop writer working in indie rock.
Christopher Willits processes guitar notes through a series of self-written Max/MSP plug-ins, garbling the guitar’s natural sounds into a series of clicks and hums. It sounds like an auditorium full of crickets underwater, but is sublimely rhythmic, and the cascading melody of his textured guitar clicks can express much more than you would expect. His playing on self-released CD-R “:plateaus, centers, stoma” sounds extremely personal on untitled track #2, which drifts on spare guitar notes and airy background drones with the rhythm of a slow dance.
On his debut for Ghostly International “Surf Boundaries” in 2006, he brought a full band sound to support his signature style, and dreamy vocals to drift in and out of the mix, and on stand-out track “Medium Blue” the drums accentuate the rhythm that was hinted at in the empty space of his earlier recordings while leaving room for his clicking guitar to be felt.
No one knows how to really take white people in hip hop, not that race is a big issue, but you always have to wonder how authentic it really is. That probably opens up a whole other can of racial worms, but I honestly have an inherent distrust of my own race, and I can’t say white people haven’t earned it. We don’t talk about it, but we’re really terrible. We by-and-large can’t rap, we have some good authentic producers, but the only time I’ve been able to take a white rapper seriously has been when they stop being a cop-out and represent their roots (Bubba Sparxxx is the exception, I can’t even look at him without laughing).
Food for Animals kind of personify where they’re from without cheaping themselves as caricatures. They’ve been based out of Washington, D.C. for the formative years of their sound, and on the majority of their “Scavengers” EP they take huge shots at the Bush Administration in between bursts of chainsaw-distorted melodies. Andrew Field-Pickering (aka Vulture Voltaire) and Nik Rivetti (aka Ricky Rabbit) hide hip-hop under layers of drill & bass and glitchy noise that sometimes bypasses all semblance of a beat, while punchlines fly at directly at you with clear delivery and gruff inflection, energetic and pronounced enough to keep the song punchy over the discordant melody backing it. Ricky Rabbit’s production style shows knowledge of hip hop roots on their new album “Belly”, but the band has been lauded more by the IDM crowd and Jason Forrest’s label Cock Rock Disco releases “Belly” this month, after half a year of delays. It’s more cohesive than “Scavengers”, and it’s the first sign of Vulture Voltaire distancing himself from the D.C. political themes of their earlier stuff, while the U.S. gets a licking, he’s frank and vivid on “Grapes”, where he waits around as his mother dies from cancer, laconically dead-panning “every time I hear the word cancer, I need a cigarette/I’m not sure I get it yet”.
They’re a tough listen for casual fans of rap or anyone who can’t digest glitchy songs, but if you want something to alienate everyone in the world when you blast it from your car speakers, look no further. (Also see: Hearts of Darknesses)
I found out about this band almost by accident a few weeks ago, absent-mindedly following one of those recommendations sites like last.fm give you, which never pan out and lead you on a blind chase of “you like guitars? this band has guitars too, logically you must love them”… But this was being linked from a math rock band, and if there’s one thing I pride myself on, it’s all-encompassing knowledge of bands who like finger-tapping and have amazing drummers.
Collections of Colonies of Bees do not love finger-tapping. They love laptops, and they love banjos, their drummer is amazing and they love me, and we’re going to get married. From every song of theirs I heard I got a refresher of everything I remembered I loved about music and wanted to hear. Though they aren’t math rock, members of the band do come from the band Pele, from Chicago. Everything they’ve put out has kind of defied labels and description, but half of their albums sound like Greg Davis is sitting in with half of a bluegrass band and the drummer from Appleseed Cast (in case this is one of those descriptions that only make sense in my head, read: glitchy laptop + banjos/acoustic guitar + tasteful drum playing with lots of cymbals) and they have actually been making albums since 1998. Now why am I only hearing about them now? Their 33 minute song “Stuck” alone should have been on my playlist years ago, it’s the most patiently built electronics, and i’ve never before wanted to call a snare drum beautiful.
Their new album “Birds” should get them attention, it’s an amazing album that works with post-rock tendencies and structures, without bludgeoning casual listeners with some of their more esoteric electronics. “Flocks III” (the 4 songs on the album are titled Flocks I-IV) one of the standouts, is a highlight reel of their best work; every part of the band harmonizing beautifully at once. The whole song is rich with engrossing details but the quiet moment at 4:10 with marching drums and quiet electronic buzzing leading up to the band coalescing at 5:20 sounds like the first perfect sound of 2008.
“Birds” is out January 22nd on Table of the Elements
The band I Hate Myself aren’t terribly fond of themselves. They feel about themselves how you might imagine Al Sharpton feels about unstraightened perms. They hate on that shit. But sometimes raw misery and awkward self-awareness is what you want out of your music, when you’re so inundated by songs contemplating on the vagueries of relationships it’s refreshing to hear songwriting that admits to its own problems. Call me a misanthrope, but this is usually the music that I find myself clinging to and finding the most honesty in.
Based primarily around Jim Marburger and his brother Jon Marburger, I Hate Myself recorded a series of splits leading up to a single LP for No Idea Records out of Gainesville, and disbanded shortly after, leaving a ton of people wondering about their true intents. The pervasive depression of all their songs in the fallout of the emo scene in the late 90’s have gotten people to wondering if this was all their big joke, a parody on the sad vogue of self-pitying bands who drew out elaborate dramatic conclusions about their lives based on mundane relationships. I Hate Myself’s inclusion of the word “Kame-hame-ha” in one of their songs (one of the first signs of Dragon Ball Z’s influence on hardcore music) and aching yet tongue in cheek song “Urban Barbie” about a hip-hopper ex-girlfriend of Jim Marburger’s who “shot up his heart”, show a streak of humor throughout their discography. The tone of Jim Marburger’s voice definitely betrays no sense of irony though, and his repeated pleading on “Drama in the Emergency Room” for the doctor to turn off the machine and let him “lay back and drip” is definitely no Weekend at Bernie’s.
