Witch

Forget the dog, kids: 2006 is ostensibly the year of the Mascis. Not only are Dinosaur Jr. back for reunion tours and catalog reissuing, but my favorite wah-loving stoner is revisiting his Deep Wound and Upsidedown Cross days on the side, drumming for doom quartet Witch. Mascis handled Dinosaur's thunder toms when Murph wasn't around (see Green Mind), but in Witch, it's his singular role: no blistering solos or perfect "Freak Scene" poetry, just airtight rolls and bass-drum thuds.
Spanning the psych-metal/folk divide, two of Witch's members also play in the airy Vermont octet Feathers, perhaps known best as the backup crew on Devendra Banhart's anti-war song, "Heard Somebody Say" (although their pleasant forthcoming full-length on Gnomonsong should change that). Here, singer/guitarist Kyle Thomas and guitarist Asa Irons follow the footsteps of folk-rock genre-hoppers like Six Organs of Admittance's Ben Chasny, ably increasing the volume and peeling the tie-dye from the walls.
Fans of the legendary SST doom-metal band Saint Vitus will likely find this stuff to be fun, if hardly original. Just don't confuse them with Swedish Pentagram lovers Witchcraft. Actually, okay, confuse them if you want: There are plenty of similarities in the rollicking instrumentation and occult lyricism. The 1970s-style metal cross-referencing would make for a smoking double bill, but Witch inhales more Zeppelin with its Sabbath. Also, Witch's Thomas sounds nothing like Witchcraft vocalist/guitarist Magnus Pelander; instead, he warbles like Jason Simon of Dead Meadow or, oddly enough, the Apples in Stereo's Robert Schneider.
But whatever the proper analogue or crib sheet-- and regardless of the starpower Mascis brings to the proceedings-- the Feathers boys are the stars of Witch: The album's best moments result from the torrid dual guitar solos, the well-textured feedback, and how the heavy atmosphere contrasts with Thomas' sweetly nasal howl. And that howl is fantastic, especially when Witch aims for epic extrapolations as on the mountainous "Black Saint". He also contributes a supernatural spark to epic opener "Seer" (those riffs!) and the rising/falling "Rip Van Winkle", which should take 10 years off any self-respecting banger's lifespan. (It is sorta strange, though, that this Dead Meadow-sounding dude is from Feathers and Dead Meadow's newest album was called Feathers. Are they sharing the incense and blacklights or what?)
Renaissance Faire love song "Isadora" provides a pace change with dramatic cymbal washes/crashes and acoustic starlings, but the more expansive stuff works best: "Soul of Fire"'s boogie, for example, is less appealing than rifftastic "Changing"'s glorious bongwater drone. "Changing" also inserts resounding Druidic bell tolls and harmonies dipped in the magic circle and zodiac cloak. And whenever the shit seems to patter into the shadows, a whirlwind of guitar takes off and the boys bong out a few more rounds. These are such rich landscapes, all mossy and backed with an inked sky, it's like they live in an Arik Roper sunset.
Fans of doom and 70s psychedelia have hefty decisions to make these days, so if your budget's limited, here's how things stand on the Sabbath meter: Witch holds my attention more forcefully than the Sword or Pearls & Brass, but less gloriously than Om or Sleep. There's an energy and charisma in this dosage that I find lacking in some of the younger contemporaries. Really, it could be totally nerve-wrackingly debilitating to solo and scream in front of an icon of Mascis' stature, but Thomas imparts himself wonderfully. In fact, by the closing notes of the album's finale, I always forget it's J who's manning the drumkit at all.
— Brandon Stosuy, March 14, 2006

Black Angels

Trite as it is to dredge up drug-trip comparisons while attempting to describe how music sounds, there's a particular effect of failed, go-nowhere attempts at psychedelic rock: It aims for making you feel like you're high, or at least able to empathize with the notion of feeling high, but instead it's like you're actually stuck in a room with someone else who's high while you're sober. They're having the time of their lives, experiencing all sorts of mind-altering creativity, and here you are watching them flail around inanely-- or, worse yet, they just sit there staring into space. Even with a few good-to-great moments, this happens frequently during Directions to See a Ghost, the second full-length from Austin's Black Angels: The trip is implied, but it's all a secondhand narrative that loses almost everything in translation. The band members play under the impression that they're going somewhere, but it's a completely different place than where they actually are, and in either case there doesn't even really seem to be much of a destination in the first place.
Put this album amidst a thousand other songs on your mp3 player of choice, and eventually one of the tracks will come up, and it'll sound unique and startling and impressively fuzzed-out and evil for a couple minutes. Odds are it'll then go on for another three or six or 14 until it becomes clear how little their grinding, snarling riffs and heavy-footed rhythms hold up under constant repetition. Sometimes this drone is enough to snatch your breath; there's enough of a melody (and a compellingly creepy one at that) in "18 Years" to sustain the song's five and a half minutes, and the slow, hypnotic swagger of "Mission District" pulls you in long enough to let one of the few really powerful crescendos on the album to hit you dead-on. And even if it takes a while to get to its core, "Never/Ever" peaks with this burst of high-speed chaos that condenses everything cool about "Sister Ray" into an efficiently malicious explosion
But those songs come after an opening volley of not much, as the vertiginous midtempo shoegaze of opener "You on the Run" melts into the lurching, swooning "Doves" and then into the thumping sludge of "Science Killer", each song canceling out whatever sensations you might have felt from the previous. And all the interminable record-ending "Snake in the Grass" really does once it gets going ("going" used loosely) is get a bit slower two-thirds of the way through its 16 minutes. Is it really worth listening to a song that goes on for more than a quarter of an hour if it actually loses energy the more it goes on?
The bastard of it is that the lyrics fit the tone well-- all gloomy invocations of warfare, betrayal, paranoia, and self-obsession. And these people can play: There's some sparks when guitarist Christian Bland snaps out of his robo-strumming and actually sets about cranking out frightening peals of noise, Stephanie Bailey's drumming is forcefully solid even when the rhythms threaten to lull you into inattention, and every time I try to think of who lead singer Alex Maas is derivative of, I keep flashing back on their solid-enough 2006 debut Passover instead, which is as good a sign as any of how distinct his flat but doomed-sounding wail is. And if you isolate any random 45 seconds of Directions to See a Ghost's 70 minutes, you'll definitely be compelled to listen for another few minutes-- after which time you'll probably start waiting for a solo or a shift in tone that might not even come. One thing I've tried to keep in mind is the fact that the Black Angels tend to play live with film accompaniment, so maybe it works better in that context. Perhaps they could help those of us without any drugs by pressing this stuff on a DVD next time around.
— Nate Patrin, June 3, 2008

Slint

THE BANDTodd Brashear - bassBrian McMahan - vocals/guitarDavid Pajo - guitarBritt Walford - drumsYEAR: 1991Some bands are very good at describing their music using pictures and words. Slint would be one of them. The cover says it all - this is a dark, chilling album; full of emotion but with very little warmth throughout its forty minutes. It's music in black and white, and it's hard to imagine any other band capturing "colorless sound" so well. The album title is accurate too - the guitars on Spiderland are thin-sounding and skeletal, almost skittering across the songs like the aforementioned arachnids.The band went through quite a stylistic change from their 1989 debut Tweez to this, their second (and final) album - the former was a harsh and nearly-unlistenable collection of fractured, Big Black-esque songs (no coincidence that it was engineered by Steve Albini), while the latter is much more focused, with epic and powerful songs (none shorter than five minutes). Despite the song lengths, Spiderland doesn't have the pretentiousness and technical showmanship of prog-rock, and sticks more to creating moody, atmospheric rock songs that leave the listener kind of unsettled.Breadcrumb TrailThe album starts and ends with the best tracks, although "Breadcrumb Trail" is slightly inferior to the masterpiece "Good Morning Captain". Lyrically, this is the most playful song on the album, with McMahan quietly describing an interesting day he had at an amusement park as a story rather than as rhythmic lyrics. The instruments, however, overpower his soft voice, with David Pajo's snakelike rhythms wrapping around McMahan's words during the verse before exploding into a heavy and anthemic chorus. Although the subject of the chorus isn't very groundbreaking (a ride on a roller coaster), McMahan has a way of choosing creative words to describe it ("creeping up into the sky/stopping at the top, then starting down/the girl grabbed my hand/I clutched it tight/I said goodbye to the ground"). The band effortlessly makes the transition from quiet to loud passages, and it easily dwarfs the fine (but inferior) next four tracks. Six minutes o' brilliance. 4.5/5Nosferatu ManA more straightforward (but still complex) hard rock song, with a steady but pounding rhythm section and hard-to-hear but dark-sounding lyrics (about a vampire, I'm assuming). The chorus is the catchiest thing on the album, and McMahan does a very convincing (if unintentional) Steve Albini impression. Speaking of Albini, this sounds like a Shellac song. If you like Shellac, you'll like "Nosferatu Man". 4/5Don, AmanUnbelievably anti-climactic. McMahan once again tells an interesting story, but with no percussion, it's much easier to hear the lyrics (it's anyone's guess what they're about, though). The wiry guitars slowly build tension throughout the six-and-a-half-minute song, but except for a couple short bursts of menacing distorted guitar, there's no loud emotional payoff at the end, which is disappointing but creative at the same time. It's not bad, but it borders on 'skippable'. 3/5WasherSome sad-sounding but very nice guitar before the verse, which features McMahan inventing Conor Oberst with a timid, trembly voice and unexpectedly (almost uncomfortably) emotional lyrics. It's a very chilling song, but McMahan's lyrics seem hopeful, even when he sounds so defeated. One of those rare songs that sends chills down your spine (and surprisingly enough, it's not the only one on the album that does that). It becomes extremely tense as it goes along, but unlike "Don, Aman", it does explode into a climactic energy release near the seven-minute mark before settling down again. Muy, muy bueno. 4.5/5For Dinner...The shortest song, but it still manages to break five minutes. It's an uneventful (and kind of pointless) instrumental, that they probably threw on there to make the album longer or something. Meh. 2/5Good Morning CaptainHere's where it gets good. Seven and a half minutes of very creepy and skeletal rock. The guitar clangs in the background like a warning siren, while the snakelike bass creeps along between that and the pounding, tribal drums. McMahan speaks through the verse much like he does on "Breadcrumb Trail", but the story is much more ominous this time around, as he describes a shipwreck in chilling detail. There are the obligatory bursts of ear-piercing and melodic noise, but the album's zenith comes as the song starts to wind down. McMahan is at his most emotional, whispering the lyrics ("I'm trying to find my way home/I'm sorry/did I miss you?/...I'll make it up to you") before screaming "I MISS YOU!" as the song explodes in a jagged wave of noise. I've used "chilling" way too much during this review, but that single moment is one of the most chilling and emotional pieces of music I've ever heard. An easy 5/5.The album isn't perfect, which is disappointing, because half of the tracks indicate that it could have been (1, 4, and 6 in particular). It's definitely a 4/5, no higher or lower. The band split up after this album, and although it would have been interesting to hear the follow-up, their influence lives on in countless modern post-rock bands. - sputnikmusic

Yeasayer

Over the past few years, a few of the most talked-about indie bands have been those making music with an ahistorical sense of mythic drama. TV on the Radio, Celebration, Grizzly Bear, and Animal Collective, among others, have been variously and inventively appropriating rock'n'roll's roots in ritualistic sounds, working toward individual aesthetics that merge mutual appreciations for surface and tradition. By and large, they draw upon ideas of the pre-modern (multi-part harmonies and chants drawn from religious rites, a fixation on the unseen power of the natural world), and express them through ultra-modern forms (synthesizers, electronic textures, heavy echo).
Perhaps unconsciously, these groups are working in the shadow cast by the late 1970s and early 80s collaborations between Brian Eno and David Byrne, primarily My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and the Talking Heads albums Fear of Music and Remain in Light. By surrounding Byrne's rural preacher impression on "Once in a Lifetime" with angelic new age synthesizers and ethereal harmonies, for instance, the duo pulled an affective charge from seemingly incompatible elements. The co-presence of Byrne's anxious sermonizing, a West African rhythm section and Eno's stylish ornamentation signified not only the spiritual transformation of Byrne's character, but also an important shift in pop’s approach toward its own past along with non-Western forms of music.
Brooklyn's Yeasayer are the latest entry to this group of Byrne disciples, and one of the better bands to put a new spin on his polyrhythmic convulsing. The band gained recognition earlier this year for their fantastic first single "2080", possibly because of its sonic similarities to Midlake's buzzed-about 2006 single "Roscoe". Both share a woozy, woodsy ambience, but where "Roscoe", set in 1891, was nostalgic for a rustic world, Yeasayer gazes ahead-- and not optimistically. "I can't sleep when I think about the times we're living in," Chris Keating sings, continuing, "I can't sleep when I think about the future I was born into." After two preternaturally smooth choruses, the band lives up to its name. All new age elements temporarily vanish, and the group breaks through into communalism. The sudden, fervent "yeah yeah!" pulls from the same crowded Anglo-ethnic trough as the Arcade Fire, Animal Collective, and Danielson, and establishes the band's own link between the ritualistic and the futuristic.
All Hour Cymbals, the band's LP debut, is packed with similar moments of pan-ethnic spiritualism, filtered through walls of echo and layers of gossamer synth. The album opens on "Sunrise" with a gospel-tinged a cappella vocal that wouldn't sound out of place coming from TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe and adds handclaps and austere piano. The mix is gently, gradually taken over by a droning synthetic ambience and Keating's vocals, which express his desire to merge with nature. The song's falsettoed chorus is then fleshed out with a vague Far Eastern vibe, that same sense of foreign tension reappearing later in "Worms".
This sense of apprehension lends the album a dramatic flair, best realized in "Forgiveness", which-- while reclaiming the synthetic handclap and keystroke incantation for the band's unnatural revival meeting-- calls into question the time-honored tendency to appropriate religion for personal gain. Guitarist Anand Wilder sings: "I've come to beg for forgiveness/ So forgive me," yet after pleading that "I've tried to teach by my doing, your undoing" he admits, "But my time will be your ruin." Elsewhere, "Germs" augments its earthly paranoia ("What's hurting me when I breathe/ Perhaps it's just the mold on the ceiling") with a sonic mood somewhere between Celtic and Balkan, and "No Need to Worry" is a buzzing cathedral of dread, its title only serving as an attempted calming influence.
The peak of All Hour Cymbals' tangible sense of unease, the pummeling "Wait for the Wintertime", is Yeasayer's Black Sabbath moment, transforming their chants into a dark, persistent march. Although it's not clear whether the song is the band's own origin myth, about the apocalypse, or both, the lyric, "On a cold day, you can walk forever/ On a cold day, nothing's gonna stop us," is charged with dread, only bolstered by the atonal saxophones in its climax. There and elsewhere, Yeasayer channel both a dystopian science-fiction sensibility and deep appreciation for the natural world, employing a wide, international range of sounds. The result is a unique form of indie rock world music that resists stepping into the essentialist, ethnocentric traps consistently tripped by high-minded hipsters.
— Eric Harvey, October 25, 2007

Dodos

To understand where San Francisco's Dodos are coming from, just check the weekend itinerary from their most recent visit to L.A. On a Friday, they did a campus show for USC students; but when a miscommunication foiled their next day's plan to play at the Smell-- the venue at the epicenter of the local scene-- they ended up joining a bill with Thee Oh Sees and the Crystal Antlers at a birthday party at the Silverlake Lounge, an intimate, cozy space where you can't see a thing if you're more than five feet from the stage. It's within those coordinates (campus-quad pop, art-punk, and communal, lo-fi folk) that their Frenchkiss debut Visiter exists; an acoustic-and-percussion duo at their core, Dodos manage to hit with a full-band force that's even more pronounced in their astounding live sets.
On Visiter, Dodos guitarist Meric Long alternates between fingerpicking and breakneck strumming while playing in confounding alternate tunings. Logan Kroeber's clattering, locomotive percussion (which includes shoes outfitted with tambourines) is every bit a lead instrument as Long's guitar, and a big reason the band's music has garnered comparisons to the less abstract moments of Animal Collective and the output of other new-primitivist bands like High Places and Yeasayer.
The first quarter of Visiter marries those impulses with fantastic results. The banjo playing and female harmonies on opener "Walking" echo Michigan-era Sufjan, but the connection ends at Long's stridently confident vocal delivery. That song immediately segues into the maniacal "Red & Purple", a bewilderingly worded love song accompanied by a toy piano and fuzzy bass. And after the brief "Eyelids" comes "Fools", which has been bouncing around the web in some form for months, and is fast becoming the Dodos' signature tune-- although it may soon be eclipsed by the rollicking, Feelies-esque "Jodi".
From that point on, Visiter alternates between longer, more improvisatory material and near-interludes, which can leave a slightly spotty impression on its first few listens. With more exposure, the record reveals the celebratory acoustics of Led Zeppelin III or a more song-oriented take on tourmates Akron/Family. Playing with infectious fervor, Long runs through tricky blues-boxing and molten slide riffs on the galloping "Paint the Rust" and the second half of the epic "Joe's Waltz".
Visiter's second half is anchored by "The Season" and "God?", two massive shapeshifters that help define the record. Long and Kroeber here don't seem wedded to power duo minimalism-- and it's intriguing to wonder how they could incorporate their backgrounds in metal, African Ewe drumming, and gamelan beyond a sense of rhythmic intensity. These possibilities could also make more streamlined, Magnetic Fields-like numbers "Winter" and "Undeclared" seem vanilla by comparison to some, but by making room for both, Visiter ends up being one of the most welcoming (and welcome) records of 2008 so far. — Ian Cohen, March 21, 2008

Wolf Parade

Any proper insomniac can recite the consequences of a few frantic, sheet-twisting nights: lethargy gives way to elation, reason falters, your teeth start to throb, and a vague sense of uneasiness gradually mutates into weird, wild-eyed paranoia. Wolf Parade doesn't seem like a band that routinely logs its eight hours: Apologies to the Queen Mary, the group's 2005 debut, was riddled with allusions to sleeplessness, and its follow-up, At Mount Zoomer, is no less restless-- it's a fraught, expansive ode to being way too awake. "We're tired," vocalist/guitarist Dan Boeckner admits, voice defeated. "We can't sleep."
While prepping At Mount Zoomer for release, the band reportedly promised Sub Pop "no singles," which-- no matter how attached you are to the notion of the LP as a singular document-- seems like a self-defeating vow. Paradoxically, for a statement of cohesion (take these tracks together, or don't take them at all), At Mount Zoomer is inherently disjointed, very much the product of two distinct, if exceptional, songwriters. Unluckily for Wolf Parade, the success of Boeckner and co-frontman Spencer Krug's side ventures (Handsome Furs and Sunset Rubdown, respectively) means their stylistic tics are now public information, and, as effectively as these dudes co-exist onstage, they're still singular creative forces.
The band's resolve to enlarge and intensify itself-- At Mount Zoomer seems focused on skewing darker, on sounding nastier, more perilous, and less straightforward than its predecessor, with elaborate arrangements and, you know, no singles-- translates into a lot of proggy diddling (and, ironically, less theremin). The approach yields predictably mottled results: At Mount Zoomer is both captivating ("Call It a Ritual", "Language City", "California Dreamer") and a little bit exhausting.
Recorded in Petite Église, the Quebec church owned by Arcade Fire, and produced by drummer Arlen Thompson, At Mount Zoomer is free from the influence of Modest Mouse's Isaac Brock, who produced the bulk of Apologies. Lyrically, familiar themes abound: multiple allusions to funerals, cities, dreams, empty rooms, and things that mean nothing. Wolf Parade are uniquely skilled at skewering contemporary (see also: urban, digital, accelerated) culture, and these songs relay a sense of being stuck in the wrong spot at the wrong time-- it's a tense, tenuous place to live.
"Soldier's Grin" opens with punchy keyboard and guitar, before Boeckner steps up to outline the scene: "In my head, there's a city at night," he sings, voice clear and desperate. Although the song's objectively optimistic, full of twittering synths and mewling guitars, it's also deeply anxious, and when Boeckner promises "what you know can only mean one thing" it seems pretty evident that that one thing's no good. "Call It a Ritual" is equally uneasy; Krug's quiet, opaque vocals are spectral and strange-- less piercing than Boeckner's, but way more atmospheric-- and the track descends into a dreamy, muddled haze that feels a little bit like sleepwalking. "California Dreamer", another Krug-penned cut, is epic in scope: Although it's only six minutes long, it's relentlessly squirmy, flitting from quiet, guitar-driven dirge to full-band throwdown.
Whereas Apologies to the Queen Mary closed with an unimpeachable tract of songs, from "Shine a Light" on, At Mount Zoomer fizzles and sags after its sixth track-- the record's grueling backend culminates with the contentious, 11-minute "Kissing the Beehive", a stubbornly unmelodic finale marked by a mush of throbbing guitars and histrionic vocals (ironically, it's the only track that Krug and Boeckner co-wrote). At Mount Zoomer is fractured and spastic, and at times, the band's ambition eclipses its strengths. Still, there's something about Wolf Parade's fragility that's profoundly relatable, and the sense that the entire operation could fall apart at any second-- that we're all tottering on the brink of total dissolution-- is as thrilling as it terrifying.
— Amanda Petrusich, June 17, 2008

Jerseyband

Jerseyband plays Lungcore - A new genre that infuses a horn-driven band with heavy metal valuesWhat does a screaming hardcore metal vocalist have in common with a jazz trumpeter? For Jerseyband, they are one in the same. The band's unassuming trumpeter, Brent Madsen intermittently pulls the horn from his lips just long enough to let out his version of an ape on a rampage. One moment, Madsen screams, "Move my carrot!" and the next, your head is spinning because Jerseyband has already exchanged the gates of hell for a jaunt in Peewee's Playhouse. Backed by drums, electric guitar, and guitar synth, Jerseyband's horns (three saxophones and a trumpet) cut through meaty arrangements that shock their audiences into submission. Enthusiasts have compared their sound to Mr. Bungle, Zappa, and Meshuggah but one thing is clear; this band is best categorized under their own genre of horn driven metal called Lungcore.
-CD Baby
Most incredible unsigned band out there!

check em' http://www.myspace.com/jerseyband