Page 29 - the NOISE November 2013

Califone; Frog Eyes
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ed some stan- dard, homog- enous, poorly
Frog Eyes
Carey’s Cold Spring
Self-Released
recorded folk. I also wondered if the note was a code telling me something else; though this whole nearly 60-minute album is just Littell and an acoustic with the chorus up, very mini- mally played, and in his best Elvis/Alan Vega crooning, crooning, crooning, with the reverb WAY up there.
It’s an epic block of the same arrangement, and it starts to sound like a ghost, or perhaps a baby dragon with a pompadour and trem- bly lips, trying to get you to, well, I don’t know what a baby dragon would want me or you to do. Are dragons as prevalent in other places as they are in Northern Arizona?
Califone
Stitches
Dead Oceans
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Rodney Crowell has started an indy rock band of the highest order, digital bleeps and do dads are flush. Why did Rodney Crowell start a chill rock band?
Howe Gelb
The Coincidentalist
New West Records
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The drollest Arizonan goes again strange. “Picacho Peak” is a good song name.
The Upper Strata
Phantastic Pigeon-Holes
Self Released
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A solid steel guitar holds this down as it floats between genres, never bothering choosing or worrying if things are getting stretched too thin, and more importantly, without slipping into some sort of dance-less prog rock. At the band’s worst, they sound like Dave Matthews Band, or Andy Dwyer’s fictional band, Mouse Rat. At their most phan- tastic, they avoid all pigeonholes, which I think was the point. Some songs are certainly better than others, but I get the sense that repeated listens might have the rewards of making those songs with the douchey vocals (that’s really what it comes down to here, let’s be completely honest) grow on a jaded lis- tener such as myself.
Three years in the making, and its creator stricken with throat cancer upon announcing its release, one can’t but feel the weight — it’s heavy, melancholy, deep, and as Frog Eyes has proved in the past, very weird, in a very off putting way to the uninitiated, or even the fan. One also can’t help hearing the voices, or maybe that’s just me ... The signs are every- where, written in damp cement, he says his name is Baxter and it doesn’t make any sense.
Sore Eros & Kurt Vile
Jamaica Plain EP
Care in the Community Recordings
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This takes me back to a time when these ears were first becoming familiar with sounds that were not commercial mainstream but also were not punk or hip hop. A netherworld of No No No Depression krautrock-core that labels like Kranky, Temporary Residence, and King Coffey’s label, Trance Syndicate filled record store bulk bins. This slow core sounds somehow fresh, sad, and beautiful. It’s dirty, and like many of Kurt Vile’s early recordings, sounds very, perfectly, home-recorded. The vocals (on track 2) are beyond deadpan and laidback.
The voices of rock n roll are gimmicky and heavy-handed. They grow louder in my head, the longer I live this life. Regardless of short- comings, at some point my parents became less a biological fact as much as musical ex- ploration. They said that love is all you need, and sometimes, this is true. Even as the inter- net and social media technology drown the underground and aim to alienate all of us, rock n roll continues to preach. Jesus, the first rock n roll fanatic was a hell of a bowler, and two thousand years later, the Dude abides.
I once went to a house show in Flagstaff many moons ago. I was baptized and born again. I listen to the records they send me, and I download the links they send me, and I seek salvation. I hear voices and I lose per- spective and I hear voices.
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• NOVEMBER 2013 • 29
b Ugh
bb Eh
bbb Solid
bbbb Gold bbbbb Total Classic