Author: mdefeo

Genre-crossers bare all

‘Sometimes the paths that you chose not to pursue effect the one you end up taking the most. The Shins’ lead singer James Mercer is rock-solid evidence in favor of this theory. He has a history of doubling back on roads with reckless abandon. His choices play out like a roadmap of downtown Manhattan; they are riddled with deserted affairs.

Mercer is notorious for capriciously parting from dead-end jobs. When the whim hits him, he has no bones about deciding to simply not return from lunch. To him, any lapse in the daily workflow can be an opportunity to jump ship, if need be.

In nearly every case, a “need be” situation arose quickly. One job he briefly held was at an amusement park, open during only the blisteringly hot summer days of Albuquerque, New Mexico. He worked by the Spider, a spew-inciting blender of a ride that caused most of its patrons to release the semi-digested contents of their inner beings. Such instances were so frequent that a covering soon was put in place to protect the unassuming folks down below from the opening-bile skies, ready to unleash their unfriendly acidic showers at any given moment.

One of Mercer’s last positions was at a high-volume silk screening factory where the machines did a majority of the work. Although the position sounds harmless enough, the chemicals used in the screening process were highly toxic to all those who had a tendency to breathe.

Everyone knows, though, that chemicals are the spice of an artist’s life. So, it wasn’t that far of a leap to the path that he should end up taking to its natural end, as an up-and-coming rock ‘n’ roll star.

Despite the success of The Shins, he hesitates to assume that the band has naturally come upon stardom. Rather, it’s a process that has happened by accident and is comparatively much less grueling than dealing with either regurgitations or toxins.

“It’s all sort of a coincidence that this band has done as well as it has done,” said a weary Mercer, worn down by the long stretches of traveling involved in a tour. “It was more like a recording project I did by myself when it first began.”

During its gestation period, it was just a collection of four-track recorded songs written and recorded primarily by him when the opportunity came for him to remove his focus from his other band, Flake.

Flake, most of whose members moved onto The Shins, was described by Mercer as a “typical ’90s indie rock band.” He described their sound as a little bit Superchunk, a little bit Pavement.

Another band he played in was Blue Roof Dinner, which did covers of songs mainly by Dinosaur Jr., the Pixies and My Bloody Valentine.

Once The Shins took on enough members to carry out the recordings in a live setting, a few degrees of separation led them to Sub Pop. The proper connections were made, “Oh, Inverted World” was released and the rest was pretty much history.

Well, except for overcoming obstacles.

“The worst part of youth culture is the pressure you are driven by to align yourself with a certain group,” said Mercer. “You have to know whether you’re a punk, into death metal, if you’re a hippie, or whatever. Hopefully people don’t feel that way about our band.”

In keeping with the tradition of categorizing, he aligned himself with the skaters and grew up listening to Brit-pop bands like The Cure and Echo and The Bunnymen, as well as American punk staples the Pixies and Sonic Youth.

One of the bigger barriers the band has recently had to overcome is the overwhelming fear of not being able to live up to the standard set by their initial release.

“Everybody says not to worry or let the pressure get to you,” he said. “That didn’t make a difference. It still got to me.”

The best way to deal with stressful situations, of course, is to find outlets to channel through which to channel the problems. One of the ways the band does this is through mutual assistance, playing video games and in the arms of loved ones.

In the case of keyboardist Marty Crandall, that loved one is Elyse Sewell, a top runner-up on the UPN program, “America’s Next Top Model.” Currently, she is in Milan doing a photo shoot for a fashion cover and preparing for another photo shoot which will land her face on billboard ads.

“That, on the other hand, is a sure sign that you are a true rock ‘n’ roll band,” said Mercer, with tongue planted firmly in cheek. “When someone in the band is dating a model, you’ve got to be a rock star.”

deja entendu

‘You know you’ve made it big when you’re a character in a computer game. Brand New, you must be proud of your Emogame 2.0 status. Like most musicians satirically represented in the Emogame, it’s hard to tell if the presentation is a backhanded compliment or a forehanded slap in the face.rnSo, let’s start with the backhand before moving to the forehand.rn”Deja Entendu’s” second song is titled “Sic Transit Gloria … Glory Fades.” Although it’s just a simple Latin phrase and it’s English translation, one cannot help but assume it is a reference to “Rushmore.” That was an amazing movie.

Okay, now for the backhand.

It seems like there’s a rapper in the band. Maybe it’s supposed to be some sort of a punk’s rendition of freestyle but it just sounds like white guys rapping over screaming to me. That’s only one step removed from Linkin Park or Limp Bizkit, y’all.rnIn whatever twisted, bland way emo now means “emo,” this band fits into that genre. Maybe it now means the following:rnEmo: a subgenre of the independent musical culture from which a musical group runs as fast as possible to the borders of mainstream music.

It’s like nu-emo bands are the illegal immigrants of the musical community – and we all know how a few locals feel about “illegals.”

Here’s a word of advice: never trust an “indie” band that has done so many major magazine articles, covers and photo shoots – especially not in such a short period of existence. In this case, the word indie means either “too young to be taken seriously” or it’s just a label some public-relations person slapped on because its current marketability.

city of festivals

‘William Seidel and Ryan Weber were two late acquisitions to The Promise Ring shortly before the Ring’s season came to an end. Together, they provided backing vocals, percussion, keys and bass for that pop-punk collaboration.

As co-conspirators, they earned a modest reputation for their true effort, Decibully, but don’t expect them to live in TPR’s shadow for long. As a matter of fact, don’t expect them to sound anything like The Promise Ring.

Siedel and Weber are just two of the many driving forces behind Decibully. Originally formed to be a three-piece, the band has expanded to include seven members. Being a septet has freed the band up to explore new dimensions to their sound and focus more on their instrumentalism than just churning out songs. Their priorities are straight: music first, vocals second.

“City of Festivals” is a meticulous freshman release on Polyvinyl Records. It leaves no style untried. The songs’ mass lies in crisp, clean musical lines, driven primarily by keyboards and secondarily by guitar. Seidel’s vocal parts formulate the density of the songs. The lax and jazzy tones of his voice make their marks in melodies that range from Jeff Buckley to Sade to Wham!-era George Michael to Dido. His vocal possibilities are endless.

This record manages to walk the mellow music line while rarely tilting to the boring side. The tunes are fresh and difficult to categorize. It is “indie unprecedented.” While coming to the too-close-to-Oberst Bright Eyes comparison once or twice, mainly because of the band’s similar-sounding choir use as a song introduction, there is little to no leeway to make lazy comparisons.

Aside from the sonically defining keyboards and Seidel’s voice, the most enticing qualities of “City of Festivals” are the banjo and lap-steel parts. They add texture to the songs and give them a broader dimension.

If you’re ready to try something new that isn’t so weird it takes months to grow on you, Decibully is the band to which you should listen. They’re easy-listening indie rock.

caution

‘Listening to record after record for the purpose of critique can be a mind numbing experience. For every decent record that comes in to the office, 20 horrible albums short-circuit numerous pleasure-firing synapses. Although the job of reviewing music might seem appealing, it ruins the music-listening experience. The unconscious singing along to a song never happens anymore. Never.

Then Hot Water Music’s most recent album showed up. Within two or three listens, it became a daunting task to not sing along.

After countless years of dominating the indie scene, these Gainseville rockers are still adjusting to the more comfortable fit of a bigger record label. With more room to breathe, “Caution” sounds more mature and satisfying than previous Hot Water Music releases.

Easily, this album rivals 1997’s “Forever and Counting” as the best HWM album to hit the shelves. “Caution” is undoubtedly smoother around the edges, while still maintaining the rough Fugazi-esque qualities responsible for the impressive list of credentials the band has to its name.

Hot Water Music, a band inspired by the name of Charles Bukowski’s depressing collection of short stories, is one step ahead of the emo-core genre. Their vocals are admittedly raw and from the gut and are matched only by the same heartfelt stylings of Chris Wollard and Chuck Ragan’s vocals. Jason Black’s is also one of the best bassists currently in rock music. The guitar work and drumming does not lag too far behind.

HWM is known for their consistency and energy driven forcefulness, but “Caution” purposely focuses that energy more than prior albums.

The album runs the gamut of styles, in so far as a hardcore band can be versatile; an envelope which HWM keeps pushing further.

The variety of instruments, such as slide guitars and violins, might be less apparent in this album, but its emotional range is much wider. Songs such as “Trusty Chords,” the catchiest song on the album, express lonely and empty sentiments completed by rather clever conceits such as these lyrics from the aforementioned song: “I hate this place but I love these chords. ‘An empty fate just means an even score.’”

The secret is out

‘Musician John Dufilho is in the studio recording music. It’s a favor he’s doing for a friend. The music he’s recording is for a television advertisement. Explained as “sort of a long story,” he put it simply by saying “it’s no big deal, though.”

He laughs it off modestly. Having any part is in any form of television broadcast is something that most of the rest of us can only dream about. The potential exposure does not seem to faze him.

“Really, it’s not a big deal,” Dufilho repeats.

This is no exercise in futility for him. As a matter of fact, working with others is something that he has been learning to do recently. Actually, it’s something that’s becoming a part of his everyday routine.

As the creative force behind Dallas, Texas’ musical prodigy, The Deathray Davies – best rationalized as “how cool would the Deathray Liotta’s sound?” – he is coming to the conclusion that relinquishing control is not only a necessary evil but is sometimes the best way to forge ahead.

The Deathray Davies began as a solo studio project with the release of 1999’s “Drink with the Grownups and Listen to the Jazz.” From there, they have continued to release roughly an album per year, each with somewhat of a clever title. With each new album, he found himself sharing the studio space more. By the time last year’s “Midnight at the Black Nail Polish Factory” came around, The Davies were a full band.

The addition of members earned the band six nominations for the Dallas Observer Music Awards, including Best Rock/Pop Band, Best Song and Best Album. In a tight-knit scene in Texas that produced bands like At the Drive-In, Egon, and such, Texans love this band. To back that fact up, they have been accepted to play at more South By Southwest (SXSW) festivals than Dufihlo can count.

“About three or four times,” he said. “We’ve gotten in every time we applied.”

Not a bad record for a band that has been around for four or five years.

Now, the word is spreading and they’re no longer the secret of the Lone Star State.

“I’ve been getting some shit from a friend of mine,” he continued. “He lives in Fort Worth and we haven’t played there in over a year, yet we’ve played in places like Chicago like four times in the past year.”

A hazard of touring is that bands often end up playing everywhere but home during a tour.

Another hazard is what happens when you drink and drive – your bike.

“On a recent tour, we brought our bikes because we actually thought we would get some exercise on the road,” he said. “On days when we’d be loading up the trailer, we’d be drunk and decide to have these contests of who can drive their bikes into the wall of the club the hardest; who can wreck the best. That served the purpose of the bikes for that tour.”

It’s easy for Dufihlo to laugh this off. As far as the history of the band goes, this is the only type of wreck the band has encountered.

Upon moving to Dallas, he befriended Centro-matic’s Will Johnson. He was impressed with the fact that Johnson had just released the first Centro-matic album by writing and recording all the parts on his own. So, he took the cue and decided to write on his own, aside from his then-punk rock band, Bedwetter. And The Deathray Davies was born.

“The first two records, it was all me playing on them,” he said. “I started a band without having a band. Fortunately, it’s turned into one from there.”

breathe

‘Ambient shoegazer dream pop. Think Sigur Ros. Think Coldplay or Radiohead. Think Bjork and the Sugarcubes. This is what you get when you dissect Leaves.

Now add up Leaves, Sigur Ros, Bjork and the Sugarcubes and ask yourself: Are Icelandic bands some of the most talented musicians in the world or what?

Be careful. Something awfully suspicious is going on over there. It’s relatively quiet and then, out of nowhere, a new musical act appears that proves American music to fall in the quantity and not quality category.

“Breathe,” the Leaves’ Dreamworks debut, is a solid 13-track album that proves its worth with every listen. The benefit is, the more you listen, the more the band distinguishes itself from its contemporaries.

The vocal comparisons to Coldplay’s Chris Martin are inescapable, but a close listen to “Breathe” will have the listener following the plight of the guitar through its long and labor-intensive journey. It wails in pain. It beckons for attention. Metaphorically speaking, it plays the role of the tortured soul and it accomplishes this task better than the vocals themselves.

In the mix, the guitar is equally represented but can get lost in the musical melee. Be sure and keep an ear out for it.

sing the sorrow

‘”Radiate. Recognize one silent call as we all form one dark flame. Incinerate. Love your hate, your faith lost. You are now one of us,” chants Davey Havok on “Miseria Cantare,” the prologue to “Sing the Sorrow,” AFI’s magnum opus and sixth album.

“You are now one of us,” an ever so eerie statement that is both

cultish and brazenly dark in its ramifications, the most descriptive example of what to expect from goth-punk icons AFI.

If you are not among their legion of fans yet, this album will reconcile those differences. As the band promised in interviews prior to the album’s release, “Sing the Sorrow” will defy all expectations of AFI fans, as their fourth release “Black Sails in the Sunset,” did so long ago.

This album is a long way down the road from the band’s earlier albums, such as “Answer That and Stay Fashionable.” The band has moved to a major label, flexed their muscle, and shown just what they can do if provided with the right space and resources. AFI has taken the sound that they began to define in their previous album, “The Art of Drowning,” and has expounded upon it, refined it, and made it much more alluring and distinguished.

While maintaining the same punk roots and relying on all that their fans have come to know and love as AFI, this is a band that prides itself on having the ability to redefine themselves with each passing album. Each album gets progressively darker and more complex. This one adds on the assistance of a choir, orchestral instrumentation, and “dark wave” drums that point heavily to an influence from bands such as VNV Nation.

Although Davey Havok’s voice is strong and has an impressive range, the lyrical content of the songs and his high-pitched screams have always bordered on the odd combination of ’80s Glam Rock and pop punk sensations such as A Newfound Glory. It is reminiscent of these sounds, which is the one prominent downside to AFI, but it still has the ability to prove its distinctness and uniqueness.

As the title may suggest, and as any AFI fan already knows, these are not lighthearted topics that Havok touches upon in his songs. The songs are moody and evoke a depression of gothic darkness. Still, something of a radiant, resplendent beauty shines forth from the album.

beaker

‘One year later and no show for experience, 22 Brides are back with their second album Beaker.

At the risk of sounding corny, this album should be entitled rnWeaker because that is what it is.  If this is what one year of experience did to them, I would hate to see them ten year from now.

This album is said to have fuzzy guitar riffs.  However, I can’t really tell.  They were turned down so low that I thought this album was a capello.  This album could basically be described as Jamie Walters: If he was a girl without a guitar.

This New York based band plans to go on tour again this fall.  Take my advise, don’t waste your money on tickers.

There are four decent tracks on the album.  They are: “Truck stop,” “Sunday Best,” “Insomnia,” and “No Enemies.” Let me clarify, when I say decent, it does not mean that I really liked them.  Rather, it means that they are the only songs that I did not want to fast forward through.

The release date is set for September 19th, and all I can say is, rn”Hey, it’s your money.”rn

http://www.theagapepuppets.org

‘OK, you’re going to give us shit about using a Christian Web site, aren’t you? Calm down, duderino. We’re not insulting Christianity, Christ, or those imaginary pixies and their fairy dust or whatever it is you believe in. What you do in the privacy of your own, specifically designated place to practice religion is your business.

As long as you don’t believe you can control the weather by closing your eyes and concentrating really, really hard, we may not make fun of you. Or, unless you use puppets to convey messages to the public and your name is not Mr. Rogers. Freaks.

We’re talking about puppets here, people. PUPPETS! What the hell?

Let’s start by stating the goal of this organization: “Sharing the Love of Christ around the World with Puppets and Chalk.”

And chalk. How did we miss that the first time around?

This team of well-intentioned and devout Christians traverse the globe to spread the Lord’s message with their hands stuck up the asses of cotton-filled kid’s toys. Just take a look at the pictures on the site. You’ve got to question who they’re helping, and how.

There’s a really funny one of a small and, as we are to assume, undernourished child arm wrestling a young adult puppeteer. With the assistance of Christ and his message, the poor child’s arm may not be torn off completely by the end of this strength test. Maybe he’ll do the Christian thing and let the kid win. What message does that spread about Christ?

Oh, wait, we promised not to insult religion. No problem. There’s a ton of obvious jokes to be made about the puppets.

To maximize the suck on this site, go to the photo albums and narrate the pictures. Just say whatever comes to mind. It won’t take long before you produce much funnier comments on this site than we did like: “Hey boys and girls in Northern Ireland, look at Christ help me juggle these rings! You know what that means? It means God loves you. Sure your homes here in Northern Ireland have been torn apart by war and poverty, but look at these fabulous colorful disks floating effortlessly through the air! It means that everything is going to be all right!”

Here’s a message to the puppeteers: If you were a starving child in a third-world country would you rather see some comfortable American speak to you without moving his or her lips, using a dummy, or would you rather get a sandwich? Puppets and chalk are not going to put a decent meal in these kids’ stomachs.

As a little side note, the organization’s mission statement offers the following precept: The wicked will be punished eternally in hell, according to God’s perfect justice; and the righteous will be eternally blessed in heaven, to the praise of God’s infinite Grace. Hell sounds more enticing.

cva

‘Good news, people. Hardcore is still alive. It has just been filtered from Lifetime through Kid Dynamite and now into Paint It Black, with a little Affirmative Action Jackson, The Curse and Good Riddance support for good measure.

Plain and simple, Paint it Black has got it. The songs they write not only have character but they seem like they have the qualities I can only assume women look for in “a good man.” They are tight, powerful, funny, packed with tongue-in-cheek wit, and intellectual and politically minded – but not overbearingly so.

With the longest song reaching just under pop’s classic three-minute limit, Paint It Black knows how to cut the crap and get to the point, as this track’s title suggests: “This Song Is Short Because It’s Not Political.” It’s all shorter, faster, louder.

“CVA” (Cardio Vascular Accident), which doubles as a song about vocalist Dr. Dan Yemin’s stroke in 2001, is an homage to old-school punk. In addition to being packed with references to the Rolling Stones, Fugazi, Minor Threat and so on, it breathes life back into the sounds of the NJ/PA hardcore scenes.

This uncompromising and unabashed onslaught of songs grips you by the throat and pins you up against the wall. With your feet dangling in the air, your interest will be piqued. It sounds sadomasochistic but fans of good hardcore will tell you they don’t mind getting their asses kicked by an aggressive auricular attack.

Yemin, who has his doctorate in psychology, makes his debut behind the microphone with PIB. While his voice is noticeably distinguishable from the vocals of Jason Shevchuck and Ari Katz, singers of Yemin’s prior endeavors Kid Dynamite and Lifetime, it has the raw, throaty quality to it that gives bands such as Hot Water Music and Small Brown Bike an edge. His vocal lines are a bit more drawn-out than the singers of his previous bands but, nevertheless, his Guy Picciotto-esque debut is impressive.

The only question this album will leave you with is “Why was Yemin inspired to write a song (“Four Simple Steps to Total Life Satisfaction”) based on John Carpenter’s “They Live,” starring Rowdy Roddy Piper?” What a horrible movie.