When I picked up Black Mountain’sIn the Future and asked my friend Lev if he’d heard of the band, his eyes popped in such diameters of familiarity and glee that I had to ask him to write up the review. Says he:
Whether intentionally sarcastic, or accidentally honey-tongued, the title of Black Mountain’s second full-length “In The Future” is a perfectly unfitting title to describe the music contained therein. The opening chords of “Stormy High” teleport you back to the smoke-filled seventies, doused in all of the psychedelic fervor, debauchery, and flower-power that gleamed so bright some-forty-odd years ago. Large doses of whirling organ, fuzzed out Gibson SG’s, and dual vocal harmonies drowned in reverb, undoubtably, and comfortably, place this record alongside some of the dusty vinyl in your dad’s record collection. The album’s song structures stick to such a relentlessly precise formula of combing abrupt moments of energy and drudging meditative breaks that the schizophrenic rhythm of the album sometimes begs for a shorter, more impactive musical delivery. Ultimately, this album will appeal to people either attempting to relive their youth under the guise of the seventies, or those assuming the seventies never ended.
As awful as weather comparisons to music are, Citay’s “First Fantasy”, off the upcoming Little Kingdom, is proving to be a soundtrack for today’s drizzle. The song is rich with voices and instruments that knot through and through in harmony, but it’s really the pace that’s remarkable. There’s a certain kind of slowness, as exemplified in a confident stride, that lacks neither drive nor movement, and as such asserts independence. Unlike the excitement of being in the middle things, of having given to the uncertainty of whichever way a process might head, including nowhere, which has its own charms of course, this pace feels like it benefits from hindsight, of having come through something that has certainly passed. Of the identifiable lyrics, there are the lines: “Last week was like a year ago/ Five years, just like yesterday”.
Dead Oceans will release Little Kingdom on November 6th.
So far as it can inferred from the sound of “Dancing Behind My Eyelids”, which you can trade for your email address on the band’s website, and “They Made Frogs Smoke Til They Exploded”, which now has an animated video, the new Mum is sounding cheerful. This, considering the album they gave us last, Summer Make Good, was not quite a summer album (if one were to make a quick, misguided guess from the title). Instead, it stretched with mournful longings, drawing pictures of dark clouds, icy water and a harsh, winter landscape. And as if the album’s dreary weather wasn’t obvious, song titles such as “Small Deaths are the Saddest” and “Weeping Rock, Rock” served as reassurances. But for now, from the upcoming Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy that comes out on September 24, something far brighter.
Engine Room Recordings hosted a contest to mark the upcoming release of a compilation featuring “15 acclaimed underground artists covering their favorite guilty pleasure pop tunes”. They are now showing winning videos and other entries at YouTube, film student Andy Cahill emerging victorious with his stop-motion piece for Devendra Banhart’s rendition of “Don’t Look Back In Anger” by Oasis. This and other two other songs revealed by way of the videos - Petra Haden’s cover of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin” and Will Oldham‘s cover of Mariah Carey‘s “Can‘t Take That Away” - surely hint at Guilt by Association being an interesting take on guilty pleasure pop tunes. Launch parties will be hosted in various cities, including two in New York: August 21 at Pianos and September 7th, “the big launch” following September 4 release, at Joe’s Pub.
From the sound of this first peek and the title of their forthcoming album (In Our Bedroom After the War), Stars seems to be still weaving from the space where they’ve garnered most inspiration: the bedroom. A bedroom that witnesses the rise and the fall of a relationship, never not looking out to the same swaggering and staggering of the world outside. The album is coming to the US on September 25th, and the band will be playing Town Hall on October 18th. Pre-sale will be here.
When I picked up Black Mountain’s In the Future and asked my friend Lev if he’d heard of the band, his eyes popped in such diameters of familiarity and glee that I had to ask him to write up the review. Says he:
