Polyvinyl Records

Pershing

admin — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:02:00 +0000

By Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin

Pershing, the new album from Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, is named for a middle school band member Philip Dickey attended, and it blasts from the speakers with unabashed jangling indie rock joy. Layers of guitars and doubled vocals keep the band firmly attuned to their lo-fi roots on their second album. Their quirky guitar lines are augmented with horns and strings this time around, a benefit of a major label.

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, despite the laborious name, is old school indie rock in the vein of Archers of Loaf, Pavement, and bands of the Matador records mid-nineties heyday. Make no mistake; this isn’t retro rock. It just doesn’t cotton to current trends. "The Beach Song" sounds a bit like freak folk, with shades of the most recent Sigur Ros album. It's an album that feels new and unfamiliar while still retaining that cozy lived in feeling you want, like a friend you didn’t know you had finally showing up.

Pershing, like its predecessor Broom, has benefited from a rabid internet fan base and has garnered critics attention world wide. The backing of Polyvinyl Records has certainly helped the band’s chances of wider release. For a band with a vaguely ridiculous name (Dickey christened the moniker when he was seventeen), the maturity of their sonic output is a welcome surprise. Pershing is instantly engaging, but subsequent listens reveal layers upon layers of eccentric guitar turns and surprises making it a richer experience with time.

It is also a fine tribute to Alex Bethurem, a longtime friend and fan of the band who sadly took his own life. The album is dedicated to him.

Written by: Andrew Klaus, March 27th 2009

Skeletal Lamping

admin — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 11:06:00 +0000

By Of Montreal

Polyvinyl Records

I absolutely loved this album.

Before laying down my justifications for such a grandiose statement, I must put forth a couple of caveats. First, this is the only Of Montreal album I have ever listened to. I was familiar with a few of their better-known songs, but that’s it. Skeletal Lamping is the band’s ninth studio album. Second, I don’t typically like the type of music Of Montreal makes. While their sound is notoriously eclectic and has changed over time, Of Montreal in its current incarnation is most accurately described as "techno-pop-funk glam." I don’t like techno, and the word pop makes me shudder.

Despite my ambivalence toward Of Montreal's particular category of sound, I still recognize brilliance when I hear it. The opening song, "Nonpareil of Favor" left me utterly confused, but in a good way. Packed into this one song I identified funk beats, brilliant lyrics, nonsensical and unmelodic grunge-like guitar riffs, Queen-inspired operatics, psychedelic meanderings, and pop-rock precision. Yet somehow it all came together—not perfectly perhaps, but I was left intrigued and excited for the rest of the album.

It was not until the third track, "For Our Elegant Caste," that I collected another reason for singing Of Montreal's brilliance. This song is ridiculously catchy. The second it ended, it was already stuck in my head. Of Montreal is certainly pop, and god, this song must be good to dance to. Other club-friendly songs include "Gallery Piece" and "Id Engager."

Of Montreal's lyrics are top-notch. They maintain the descriptive poetry of indie rock without the accompanying pretension. Suffused throughout is a sense of frustrated disorientation on the part of singer and songwriter Kevin Barnes. It seems Barnes is afflicted with both hatefully destructive and lovingly life-affirming thoughts. In "Death Isn’t a Parallel Move," Barnes bemoans that, "All my thoughts are from a foreign host/Now I feel just like a ghost," a sentiment which oddly mirrors what it's like to read Barnes' lyrics: the concurrent onslaught of such unalloyed spite, tenderness, anxiety, fear, and elation results in a certain sense of free-floating alienation and disembodiment.

Nowhere is Barnes more confused that in the sexual arena. Some of the lyrics drip with dirtiness, while others are drenched in romantic love. Barnes recently reunited with his estranged wife, which explains a lyric like "When you're dead, I’ll look for you like Orpheus/I’ll find you some way," from "Plastis Wafers." Yet from the same song is the less romantic declaration, “I want you to be my pleasure puss/I wanna know what it’s like to be inside you.” The juxtaposition of pornographic lust with romantic yearning is prominent in almost every track, and in "An Eluardian Instance," Barnes whines, "This inbreeding of ideas is intolerable."

Baffling incongruities bleed into every facet of the album. Dark and dreary lyrics are paired with flamboyantly upbeat tunes. Illicit lyrics are paired with jazzy, romantic melodies. Kevin Barnes is a befuddled mess, and he takes us along for the ride. Sometimes so many sounds are packed into one song that a jarring discordance results. If you like uncomplicated, easy listening, this is not for you. Other music critics tell me that while Skeletal Lamping is good, the albums Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? and Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse are Of Montreal's true masterworks. Be that as it may, I can tell you with certainly that Skeletal Lamping took me by surprise and served as welcome antidote to the musical mediocrity that I've come to expect.

Written by: Katherine Don, March 1st 2009

Like It Or Not

admin — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 01:01:00 +0000

By Architecture In Helsinki

Polyvinyl Records

If the latest slate of indie bands are to be believed, feigned disinterest and irony worship are so not cool anymore. It seems as though the hipsters think they've totally moved beyond all that. This season's must-have emotional response to your surroundings? Cutesy glee, couched within a three-word (preferably multi-syllabic) band name. Problem is, it still feels like an affectation, a pose that comes off just as hollow as those other two. Therein lies my biggest issue with Australian group Architecture in Helsinki.

They're fun and funky. They're danceable enough. They have crammed more instruments than I care to count into each song. Their videos are appropriately colorful and clever, and they seem to me about as genuine as those store-bought smiles Donny and Marie Osmond trot out whenever a camera is aimed at them.

Pretension, another unfortunate characteristic this "musical collective" seems to have in spades, does not sit well with me. I have listened to both "versions" of the song "Like It Or Not." Back to back, over and over and over again. I put the word versions in quotes just now because I listened to the song from their 2007 release Places Like This, and also to the song billed as "Version 2" on the Like It Or Not EP released last summer. Either my ears are broken, or there is absolutely no difference between the two "versions" of this same song. This leaves me to wonder why the band would go through the effort of tacking on that "Version 2" addendum to the song on the EP.

"One Heavy February (2008)" is an updated version of a song originally released by AiH in 2004 as the first cut on their debut album Fingers Crossed. The original track was a charming instrumental piece that went on for a little under a minute. It's a pleasant enough way to start a record, and it should have been left the hell alone. The original serves as a core around which the group has built this overblown cocoon. It clocks in at two minutes and thirty seconds, a full ninety seconds longer than the original tune. This "2008" incarnation seems like they were fooling around with a Casio keyboard one afternoon and decided to tinker with something they already had until they turned it into something new. Now it's become... filler.

Based on his inflated vocal delivery and comfortable co-opting of "world music," I think it's safe to assume that Beirut's Zach Condon thinks Talking Heads founder David Byrne is the bee's knees. The same goes for AiH front man Cameron Bird who, along with his fellow band members, also seems to adore Talking Heads side project Tom Tom Club. Nowhere is this more apparent than on their cover of "Beef In Box," a song originally performed by British neo-prog band I.Q. From the twittering synths and the random tweaks to the ever-so-slightly off-kilter rhythm and the repetition of "You don't stop/You don't stop/You don't stop/Till the beef's in the box," it is painfully clear that Architecture in Helsinki have made it their mission to dredge up the sounds of the early-to-mid-1980s. You know, again. Goody.

Written by: M. Brianna Stallings, February 25th 2009

Modern Love and Death

admin — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 03:20:00 +0000

By Hail Social

Polyvinyl Records

Philadelphia-based Hail Social has tried, yet again, to capitalize on the dance-rock craze that has made bands like Hot Chip and Franz Ferdinand pop stars and indie rock heroes. Unfortunately, the band’s attempts at hot beats fizzle before they fail to heat up, and Modern Love and Death is a painful trip back to the 1980s.

Beginning with first track “Annabelle,” there’s a Bee Gees sensibility where the ‘70s disco and the singer’s (Dayve Hawke) falsetto seem like it might be impressive. The song is about Annabelle, the bad girl in town who stirs up trouble: “You will never know all the trouble you caused/After you the neighborhood drew up a book of laws.” He’s in love with the girl, and the song comes off cheeky and sentimental — the best of the album, which means it can only go downhill from there.

From track 2 (“Heaven”) on, it’s a bizarre mix of Hall and Oates synth rhythms and lyrics that don’t exactly convey one singular thought throughout. But on tracks like “Heaven,” some self-righteousness slips out: “I’ll bet every night I’m on your mind.”

The cheese factor really kicks in on “All Night,” when Hawk croons: “All night we can listen to the radio!” Even the lyrics are a throwback to a long time ago, when the singer was most likely a kid without an iPod, which is why the album’s title track seems so bizarre in following.

“I am a modern man and I need a modern girl who will understand,” goes “Modern Love and Death.” But if he’s anything like the songs he writes, it will certainly be a challenge to pin down if Hawk has any originality or anything contemporary about him. It’s an ironic title for a song and album that is a rehashing of the 1980s in a way more akin to Olivia Newton John than The Cure.

Written by: Trish Bendix, September 2nd 2007

Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?

admin — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 11:42:00 +0000

By Of Montreal

Polyvinyl Records

Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? the eighth album from Of Montreal, is trippy, offbeat, and terribly infectious. With their quirky brand of psychedelia, Of Montreal (who are actually from Georgia) manage to somehow combine upbeat, catchy, pop music with incredibly depressing lyrics. In the song “A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger,” a cheerful, dancable beat provides the backdrop to this opening line: “I spent the winter on the verge of a total breakdown while living in Norway.” Bizarre but always melodic, I really enjoyed how Of Montreal are experimental, but still structured and musical. This album brings out all of the good points of psychedelic pop without droning on endlessly or making me feel like I would only understand it if I had taken acid first. My favorite track on this record is “She's a Rejector” because of its warm, '60s-inspired guitar sound. This is a band I shall look forward to hearing more from.

Written by: Beeb Ashcroft, April 23rd 2007