GRIZZLY BEAR – Veckatimest (2009)

Some albums don’t let you in right away; Grizzly Bear’s previous album, 2006’s Yellow House, was one such album. Try as I might, I couldn’t penetrate that album’s delicate forlorn threshold for the better part of a month, but when I finally did, I was grateful that I remained as patient with the group for as long as I was. Yellow House, as beautiful and intricate as it is, is a bit of a reclusive affair; the songs there sound as if they drifted into being, up from the dimly-lit corners of some abandoned ancestral home just before dawn. There’s an indefinable sadness that exists in that album, and that Grizzly Bear kept such a tight reign over it was the reason for my initial difficulties in divining the beauty it contained.

Veckatimest is the polar opposite – it’s lively and inviting, and seems to spring forth out of necessity than out of some abstract, ethereal sorrow. It’s a vast improvement over Yellow House, if for no other reason than it simply feels more like an album than Yellow House did. Everything on Veckatimest is more fleshed out – the pop songs are poppier (Two Weeks and While You Wait For The Others make Knife from Yellow House practically fade from memory), while the chamber material is far more muscular and intriguing (Cheerleader would fit well on a Belle & Sebastian album, were B&A ever to record an album with Brian Wilson). In short, Veckatimest is proof that musical cloud cover isn’t always the best idea.

I mean, think about it: Deerhunter did a similar switch-up last year with Microcastle, an album that’s far superior to their previous album, the delightful but murky Cryptograms. One year later, Grizzly Bear have followed them, lifting their musical veil, and allowing us to experience them unfiltered by any sort of compositional or emotional restraints. So despite being more natural in essence than Yellow House, in a weird way, Veckatimest feels as if it’s been culled from a dream – it’s imaginative and whimsical, yet remarkably clear and prescient. And if you happen to be the one dreaming it, please, do yourself a favor: don’t wake up.

THINK ABOUT LIFE – Family (2009)

With Family, Think About Life just might have created the weirdest, most consistently restless and strangely wonderful (anti)dance album of the year. And I mean that as a compliment as much as any one person can; Family is chock full of groove and snarling rhythm, but instead of it being relaxed and sensual, it’s angular and agitated. If TV on the Radio took a bunch of uppers and then went out to play a Motown cover set at the local dive bar, it would probably sound something like this: trashed, mad and sublime. All of this is even harder to wrap one’s around given that Think About Life’s eponymous 2006 debut is such a thoroughly different album, sounding more like a fuzzed-out, reclusive twin of The Faint than a disco/funk fever dream; Think About Life was focused, heart and mind, on the fringes of the dance floor, but Family is violently in love with the feet below and the lights above.

Considering the overabundance of energy present here, it’s should come as no surprise that Family is at its best when it’s going for broke, treating all restraints as something best dealt with while hungover the next morning. And since most of the album runneth over with such a gleeful lack of moderation, it’s hard not to love. The album only really ever loses momentum in two songs, Sweet Sixteen and The Veldt (a song which, despite stealing the “you-can’t-not-love-it” melody of My Girl, still falls flat). These songs are alright by themselves, but taken in the context of the rest of the album, they seem dreadfully out of place – when an album is as unabashedly drunk on the bliss and glory of all incarnations of dance music (new and old) as Family is, opting to take a trek out to the dance floor sober here and there isn’t a smart move.

Family is an album that was destined from its inception to be fiercely divisive; it’s equally likely to be a wondrous event of musical harmonic convergence for some and a complete turn-off for others. If you’d love to hear the texture and atmosphere of Cut Copy, the refined beauty of Hercules and Love Affair, the jittery spasms of Girl Talk and the cerebral funkiness of !!! all rolled into one compact, hyperwound release, well, Family will make your dreams come true. But if you’d rather take in those bands separately, you’d best keep moving. This party’s not for you.

THE PAPER CHASE – Someday This Could All Be Yours (Vol. 1)

John Congleton’s take on pop music is truly demented; there’s no angst or longing to be found in any of his music, only bloodshed and despair. Rather than using imagery to which a collective majority might be able to connect with, Congleton’s thematic material revels in the devilishly obtuse. His melodies are twisted, snapping forth like rusted shrapnel into a series of always-open wounds. That these melodies are often as hooky and infectious as sane pop music makes everything all the more alarming.

As an engineer and producer, Congleton usually takes a straightforward, no-nonsense approach to the material at hand, so it sort of makes sense that The Paper Chase exists in the manner it does; it serves as Congleton’s own personal playground, where he can behead the guilty and conjure demonic spirits to his heart’s content. Given all this, it’s a little difficult to take in Someday This Could All Be Yours (Vol. 1), as the music here is decidedly more elegant and corporeal than anything that he’s done in the past. It almost sounds…human…in parts (though if it were, it would still no doubt belong in an asylum).

Someday This Could All Be Yours (Vol. 1) is the first of a two-part album series dealing with all manner of plagues, disasters and extinctions. So thematically, it’s already more rigid than its predecessors, which (although undeniably cohesive) functioned as little more than some loosely-related collections of Hell – past albums by The Paper Chase have shared the same torments and suffered the same fears, but everything else in them was wickedly ambiguous. Now that’s not the case here, but fortunately, Someday This Could All Be Yours (Vol. 1) htis more often than it misses.

The songs here work best when Congleton & co. keep their black hearts focused on the supernatural, as opposed to the natural. Songs like I’m Going To Heaven With or Without You (The Forest Fire) and We Have Ways To Make You Talk (The Human Condition) carry the same ominous burdens as the band’s earlier work, while songs like The Common Cold (The Epidemic) and Your Money or Your Life (The Comet) feel flat at their best and downright silly at their worst (it’s an exercise in extremes – the apocalypse is infinitely more terrifying than the common cold or a swarm of bees any day of the week). The album’s best song, The Laying of Hands, The Speaking of Tongues (The Mass Hysteria) works as well as it does because it not only is focused on the otherworldly, but it plays forth like some wayward occult exorcism that will end not in salvation but in flames. Now that’s something you don’t hear everyday.

Seeing as how Someday This Could All Be Yours (Vol. 1) is only part of a whole that I don’t yet know the totality of, it’s a little difficult to pass judgement on it (though I have no doubt the album itself, were it self-aware, would relish the opportunity to be judged). I can only say that it’s a bit weaker and more uneven than previous efforts by The Paper Chase, but when the songs throttle mercilessly into high gear, the band has never sounded better. And it’s just as well, too. Not all extinctions are created equal.

SUNN O))) – Monoliths & Dimensions (2009)

There are a lot words that people who aren’t familiar with extreme music will attribute to Sunn O))) upon first listening to them, but the first word that comes to my mind when I think about Sunn O))), though, is quite different: spiritual. Sunn O))) are an incredibly spiritual band, but not in the way you think – Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley aren’t out to serenade your soul; they’re out capture it. And on Monoliths & Dimensions, the band imprison it in the most primal and elegant dungeon they’ve ever fashioned.

Beyond their signature, apocalyptic low-end drones, Sunn O)) augment this, their newest album, with damn near everything in musical existence: conch shell players, various choirs, swaths of horns and strings, pianos, synths, organs, tamburas, flutes and clarinets, and the demented vocals of Mayhem vocalist Attila Csihar. But given that this is a Sunn O))) album, none of these instruments fit into these pieces the way you might think. When all is said and done, the band up not with an orchestral album, but with four monstrous, ravaging hymns, old as the Earth, and every bit as cunning, vicious and unforgiving.

Sunn O)))’s music has always been unrelentingly visceral, but listening to Monoliths and Dimensions is an awe-inspiring and terrifying experience, akin to staring down an insatiable black hole. Horrifying, yes, but there’s something strangely beautiful and poetic about it, something that certainly hasn’t been exhibited on any of their previous albums. It’s always a great surprise when a band you think you have figured out manage to surprise you. It’s even better when they damn near unravel your spirit doing it.

JOHN VANDERSLICE – Romanian Names (2009)

John Vanderslice is not your typical troubadour; his music is expansive and cerebral, and his lyrics are tightly wound narratives that dodge abstraction and convention in equal measure. So while tradition may not play a central part of his style, don’t make the mistake of thinking that he can’t whittle things down to the basics of man + guitar and be every bit as affecting as he is when he’s forging electronic, atypical melodies; to back up this claim, I cite Moon Colony Bloodbath, an album you probably haven’t heard (but I have, ’cause I purchased on the recent Gone Primitive tour), as it’s a collaborative, vinyl/tour-only EP between John Vanderslice and Mr. John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats. That album features minimal electro-trickery from Mr. Vanderslice, and considering the album’s about secret organ-harvesting colonies on the moon, copious amounts of electo-trickery would not be out of place.

One can occasionally hear glimpses of the aforementioned EP’s fragility (sans the sci-fi menace) on Romanian Names, John Vanderslice’s seventh album, and the first one in a while that doesn’t deal thematically with 9/11 or the conflict in Iraq (topics which Vanderslice delved masterfully into on Pixel Revolt, and less masterfully into on Emerald City). It’s wonderful to hear John Vanderslice weave such improbable beauty out of songs like Too Much Time or Oblivion (songs that, in the hands of a lesser musician, would be unbearable), and to hear both those songs flanked by such comparatively simple songs like Sunken River Boat and C & O Canal is quite illustrative of the depths of John Vanderslice’s talent – as an artist, a lyricist, a producer. Trifecta? You betcha.

As John Vanderslice exists a bit off the singer/songwriter beaten path, trying to recommend him is a bit of a dicey proposition. There are those who (like me) will find his musical approach to be as lovely as it is endearing, and there are others who will find it too sterile to enjoy. But I’d bet money that the first group will outnumber the second any day of the week.

APOSTLE OF HUSTLE – Eats Darkness (2009)

Hey. So. There’s this band from Canada called Broken Social Scene. They kick ass. Also, they’ve had anywhere from 18 to 23 members over the past few years. And some of these members have other bands; some of these band kick an equal amount of ass (Stars, Metric), some are a bit more recognized (Feist) in the musical community, while others still are more obscure – that last one fits Apostle of Hustle, the solo project of BSS (lead?) guitarist Andrew Whiteman, like a glove. Whiteman released his first effort as Apostle of Hustle (Folkloric Feel) in 2004. That album, (and the follow-up, 2007’s National Anthem of Nowhere) were angular collections of pop that were most memorable for their density (an unusual, but not entirely uncommon, thing for pop music).

Eats Darkness is also chock full of dense Canadian pop, but Whiteman here pulls things back a bit, and occasionally presents us with songs that are comparatively simpler (Blackberry, Eazy Speaks) than his typical fare, but which are every bit as enjoyable as his denser songs are. Ordinarily, such an expansion of one’s musical horizons would be a commendable thing, but here, the juxtapositions don’t really work all that well. Worse yet, the album contains several profane-ridden, sample-centric interludes that feel terribly out of place (come to think of it, I’m not really all that sure they’d fit in anywhere).

If you’re into Broken Social Scene, Apostle of Hustle are definitely worth getting into, but I don’t know if I’d start with Eats Darkness; while it’s far from a bad album, it’s not as cohesive as the earlier ones. Typically, I’d expound a bit more information for you here, but really, that’s about all there is to say about that.

A HAWK AND A HACKSAW – Délivrance (2009)

Given that Neutral Milk Hotel’s musical imagery possessed an extraordinary reverence for the dawn of the 20th century, it’s more than fitting that the folk music A Hawk and a Hacksaw (an ensemble founded by former NHM percussionist Jeremy Barnes) play isn’t American in origin (though the band certainly are). No, A Hawk and a Hacksaw are “old world” in the strictest sense; unlike associates Beirut (who sometimes ride their Eastern folk down a slope of Western pop), they shun the modern musical world as if it didn’t exist.

While it might sound as though I’m describing a niche genre here, Eastern folk has started to penetrate the modern musical scene in some form or another for quite some time now. Gypsy punks Gogol Bordello have shared the stage with Madonna and Devotchka were nominated for a Grammy for their work on the Little Miss Sunshine soundtrack, and that’s just from the past few years. But on Délivrance, their fifth album, A Hawk and a Hacksaw continue down the traditionalist path they’ve been forging for some time now, but it’s getting more and more difficult to follow them with each release. The Way The Wind Blows was an exquisite album, and their collaboration with The Hun Hangár Ensemble was as well, but Délivrance is fair, at its best, and a test of patience at it’s worst. This is due primarily to the fact the album rarely dips below 180 bpm, and while the musicianship and musical attention to detail here is stunning, it too often becomes a blur.

While it’s easy to admire the band for holding fast to the musical traditions of a region they don’t even inhabit (the band’s music is primarily Balkan in origin), it’s also difficult to praise them for it; Délivrance doesn’t feel like a folk album so much as a prolonged musical exorcism, a tarantella on a massive scale. I’m reminded of the end of Snow White (the German fairy tale, not the Disney bastardization): “and she danced and danced, until she fell down dead.”

ELUVEITIE – Evocation I: The Arcane Dominion (2009)

While my initial review of Eluveitie’s last album was mildly positive, as the year wore on, it grew on me (especially after seeing their blistering live show at PaganFest that summer), and it wound up becoming one of my favorite metal albums of last year. So when I found out that they’d be releasing not one, but two new albums this year, it took all my strength to resist the urge to build a sun wheel and play the hurdy gurdy in front of it whilst dancing to celebrate the arrival of Samhain (even though it wasn’t November…yet). Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Evocation I (and presumably, Evocation II as well) wasn’t a metal album at all.

For those of you unfamiliar with Eluveitie, allow me to fill you in: the band (who hail from Switzerland), play folk metal, mixing traditional Celtic/Gaulish instruments and themes into black metal songs. Now, there’s lots of folk metal bands; some of the more notable ones would be Finntroll, Primordial and Korpiklaani. But, aside from the occasional interlude, most folk metal bands have never stripped the “metal” out of their sound, and dedicated an album’s worth of material to the folk aspects that remain. But that’s what Eluveitie do here. If there’s a midpoint between Dead Can Dance and Sol Invictus, Evocation I resides there.

Given that the album is, conceptually, delves more deeply into Gaulish mythology than any of the band’s previous work, going acoustic here makes sense, but unfortunately, the album wears thinner and thinner as it goes on. Worse yet, some odd stylistic choices, such as randomly including black metal shrieks in a few of the songs, totally ruin the atmosphere the band were going for.

Still, Evocation I is not without its high points. But there’s less of them here than on any of the band’s previous albums, and the band’s creation of a purely folk album isn’t by any means a failure, it certainly is the weakest entry in their catalog to date. Perhaps it’ll feel more complete when Evocation II is released later this year. We’ll have to wait and see now, won’t we? Now, where’s my sun wheel?

IRON & WINE – Around The Well (2009)

As far as odds n’ ends collections go, Around The Well is more calculated than most; listening to it from beginning to end, you can hear Sam Beam’s sound evolve from his rustic four-track days, to the more polished, naturalistic sound favored in his later albums. But two very important things haven’t changed in Iron & Wine’s music: Beam’s Southern-gothic lyrical eloquence and his hushed, vapor-thin delivery. No matter what instruments Beam surrounds himself with, he always sounds as if he’s addressing you, the listener, directly. We should all be so lucky.

A lot of the songs on the two discs/three LP’s of Around The Well have made their way into the world by way of singles, 7″’s or compilation/soundtrack appearances (indeed, one of the band’s most well-known songs, the almost-a-lullaby cover of The Postal Service’s Such Great Heights was previously available in the US only on the Garden State soundtrack), but hearing them collected all in one place is a reminder that Sam Beam does not put out much, if any, bad material, even if it’s left on the proverbial studio floor for another day. As far as original material goes, the album’s first disc plays like an immensely satisfying alternate version of his 2002 debut, The Creek Drank The Cradle (an album I adore, so that’s quite a compliment coming from me). When Sam Beam focuses on the songs of others (as he does with The Postal Service Cover, as well as a cover of The Flaming Lips’ Waitin’ For A Superman), he’s admittedly a bit one-dimensional, but that’s really a blessing; by choosing to cover songs that don’t naturally fit his troubadour palette, he manages to transform these songs into something simpler, but with a fascinating beauty.

The album’s second disc concludes with what has long been Beam’s finest song: The Trapeze Swinger, a nine-and-a-half minute window into two lives that are so entrenched in quiet sadness and unspoken love, a song so rife with resplendent religious overtones and rich imagery that it’s hard to believe that it was inexplicably written for the soundtrack of the 2004 film In Good Company. Everything that makes Iron & Wine the crown jewel in the post-millennium folk resurgence is exhibited flawlessly here – the detailed but uncluttered arrangements, the thematically-linked verses, and melodies that don’t shoot for your heart as much as they feel to have been borne from it. I could think of no better way to end Around The Well than with this song. And once you reach it, I guarantee you’ll feel the same.

GREEN DAY – 21st Century Breakdown (2009)

Green Day’s newest album, 21st Century Breakdown, is nearly 70 minutes long. I say this because anyone who was even casually familiar with the band and their meteoric rise/fall/rise in the 1990’s and into the new millennium should raise their eyebrows at that statement. Hell, the band’s previous rock opera, American Idiot, didn’t even crack the 60 minute mark. And yes, I did say “rock opera” back there, a term the band have upped the ante on with 21st Century Breakdown. Perhaps (or, more realistically, perhaps not) stealing a cue from Swedish prog maestro Daniel Gildenlöw, Green Day have broken the eighteen trakcs on 21st Century Breakdown up into three acts, each one noted with a roman numeral (Act I: Heroes and Cons, Act II: Charlatans and Saints, Act III: Horseshoes and Handgrenades). And while Green Day don’t conjure up The Perfect Element part III: she here, what they do present us with is an album that’s almost too confounding to talk about.

I mean, if you step back and look at the big picture, it really is quite remarkable; the band that gave us Brain Stew and Basket Case are now writing high-brow political concept albums about global sociological decay as seen through the eyes of a fictional couple, Christian (a play on words if ever I’ve seen one – listening to the song Christian’s Inferno quickly will confirm this, even if you’ve never read Dante’s The Divine Comedy) and Gloria (see previous parenthetical notation, but disregard the aforementioned song). Also encouraging is the fact that Green Day (a band who once dealt in three-chord punk) pull off all the musical arrangements on the album with command and ease.

As far modern bands go, 21st Century Breakdown made me think of The Dear Hunter on more than one occasion. Unfortunately, the biggest difference (and the one thing that holds 21st Century Breakdown back at every turn) is that The Dear Hunter’s conceptual material is masterfully executed, while here, it’s too vague and murky to materialize in to anything of real significance – Billie Joe Armstrong & co. summon a lot of different and wildly varying images here, but they don’t ever seem to connect to each other in any way. Now, given that so much of 21st Century Breakdown hinges on the ideas behind it, this failure is a monstrous one, and its very existence condemns the album from entering the pantheon of Rush’s 2112 or The Who’s Tommy.

That being said, you can still pick off individual songs from the album and enjoy them on their own (the last act of the album is particularly strong; musically, it’s some of the best stuff you’re likely to hear on the radio), but doing so seems to go against the very notion of what 21st Century Breakdown is all about. That’s a conundrum if I’ve ever seen one. And it’s one I’m not going to expound upon any more here.