KWCW

If you’re like me, you probably hate “World Music” if only because it reminds of your dad’s friend who smells like bad herbal tea, owns every Gipsy Kings record and swears by his Starbucks compilations. However, to confuse Soul Jazz Records’ Tropicalia compilation with that nonsense is to make a grave mistake. Sure, it does look you’re your standard what–indigenous-music-is-hip-this-week fare: it features artists from a specific country (Brazil) at a specific time (1968), and is supposedly representative of a specific genre (Tropicalia). But, whereas most world music (read: shitty world music) purports to be singularly unpolluted by filthy western sonic imperialism, Tropicalia’s most distinguishing feature is its at times dizzying hybridity. It is world music in its true sense, incorporating such disparate elements as British garage and psychedelic rock, Afro-Cuban jazz, Bossa Nova, and American proto-funk.

Some background on Tropicalia as a genre: it lasted roughly a year, and was spearheaded by song-writing partners Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, whose collective contributions form nearly half of Tropicalia’s twenty tracks. Tropicalia’s lyrics are (allegedly, I don’t speak Portuguese) politically charged with rhetoric against the fascist dictatorship then governing Brazil. Stylistically, it’s hard to pin down, but there are some common threads that run throughout the genre: dense and often cluttered instrumentation, unconventional song structures, and up-beat tempos. Tropicalia is, despite its political content, feel-good music for a summer pool party you will never be cool enough to attend.

Among the record’s strongest contributors is Psychedelic Bossa Nova monstrosity Os Mutantes. Lead singer Rita Lee lends the band’s tracks a sense of Nico-esque calm. Meanwhile, the band indulges in Sgt. Pepper studio trickery and guitar solos as face-melting as anything produced north of the Panama canal. The record’s two stand-out tracks, though, come from Caetano Veloso. “Alfômega” is a bass-driven Meters-funk jam superimposed on to a Latin rhythm, and “Tropicalia” is the song you’ll somehow be angry at yourself for not having heard earlier. Other significant contributions include Jorge Ben’s lethally infectious “Take It Easy, My Brother Charles,” Gliberto Gil’s “Procissão” and “Bat Macumba”. The only disappointment, here, is the inclusion of several sub-par Tom Zé tracks. Zé once said, “I don’t make art; I make spoken and sung journliasm,” a statement whose consequences are, unfortunately, quite evident in his contributions to Tropicalia. Perhaps, for linguistic reasons, I just don’t have access to the strength and depth of his lyrics, but I’ve yet to hear lyrics good enough justify the flaccid Ennio Morricone impression he does on “Jimmy, Rend-se”. His contributions, though, are mere blemishes on an otherwise overwhelmingly good record.

If you need an indie-rock credibility-endorsement to embrace this record, you’ve got as many as you want. Tropicalia has been a sort of cause celebre among crate-diggers and hipsters since the mid-eighties, when David Byrne professed to loving Caetano Veloso in interviews. Kurt Cobain once publicly requested that Os Mutantes reunite. Hell, I’m sure some guy from Ya La Tengo likes Gilberto Gil. If you need way to convince yourself that it’s okay to buy a “World Music” compilation, then just remind yourself there’s no way your dad’s Gipsy Kings-loving friend would dig these freaks. And it’s not world music, because world music sucks.

Matt

Take Steve Reid, master jazz percussionist who once played sessions with Miles Davis, and in Kieran Hebden, expert manipulator of tape loops and electronic effects who composes under the name Four Tet, and what do you get? Though the possibilities seem endless, the answer is deceptively simple. You get three tracks, spanning roughly 37 minutes of seamlessly synthesized experimentation. The tracks are complex without being overbearing, structured without being monotonous, and balanced without stifling improvisation. Reid’s drums and Hebden’s computer share the spotlight, alternating focus between the two in a series of solos interspersed within the compositions. Granted, some people will be put off by the periodic moments of grating dissonance, when the duo throw sounds together in such a harsh manner that it almost hurts to listen. But, these stretches are short lived and serve as an essential contrast with the more sonorous portions. Basically transition points, when these “freakouts” are brought back under control, the sound is very similar to that before the spastic session, but slightly different. And it is these slight nuances which power the progression of sound through these dauntingly long tracks, and it is this progression which turns experimental soundscapes into a deftly interwoven masterpieces of free jazz, from two excellent composers.

However, the key to the enjoying this album isn’t actually found in the music itself, but in the way that you hear it. If you let it sink into the background, the rhythm of the percussion settling in the back of your mind, while the electronic loops add slight nuances but still remain an afterthought, then, the music will all blend together, the progression will be lost. And what will you be left with? You will be jolted back into active listenership by the sporadic moments of dissonance, and that will be all that you see in the music. These moments of harsh clashing will be the only aspects which capture your attention, and since these are not beautiful in themselves, you will be left with a bitter taste, never wanting to give this album a listen again. To truly appreciate an album like this, you need to pay attention, keying into the intricacies of Hebden and Reid’s ideas. And if your willing to put the effort in, the album with open up to you and you’ll find yourself wanting to listen to it again once you reach the end of a track, even just to remember the way the sound started, before the evolutionary magic.

-Alan

By all counts, Early Man are an atavistic band ahead of their time. Hell, they make no claim that the primitive should be avoided: from their sexist moniker to the embryonic and skeletal album art, every indication is there that the band is looking retrograde. And an exploration of the album only confirms such a suspicion, with the first tracks assailing ears with riffs worthy of Iron Maiden and Sabbath. The new thing about this recovery of 70s and 80s awesomeness? It’s not at all ironic. The clincher? Only two guys are thrashing around and creating this veritable cavern of Stone Age sound.

The names of the tracks are as ominous as the motif of the album, with “Feeding Frenzy” no less intimidating than “Death is the Answer” and “Raped and Pillaged”. And the rock is loud, shunning the recent trend of fragmented sub-genres like ‘grindcore’, ‘doom’ and ‘metalcore’ or even ‘hardestcore’.

So grow out your hair a few more inches, break out your old dirty black shirt and bang your head around. Like you did earlier.

If anyone hates glee clubs as much as I do, it might just be Oxford Collapse. No, they’re not from the fine English college town, but yes, they do play instruments, or rather, assail and attack with trebly guitar riffs, pokey drum fills and nary a downtempo beat. Sure, you might argue that something without vocals would make a better antidote to the poisonous evils of a cappella, maybe that new Explosions in the Sky record or even a John Zorn piece, but be realistic: some of us prefer catchy rollicking indie rock to self-indulgent experimentalism. And A Good Ground gives you many more-than-modest helpings of that ol’ down home jangle pop, even country-fying the album with titles like “Dusty Horses Practice”, “Empty Fields” and “Flora Y Fauna”.

As for the singing, there’s certainly no vocally-imitated guitar solos, falsetto is rare and shy yelps are preferred to mediocre grandstanding. And instead of arranging some banal Top 40 song with a beatboxer, Oxford can make even the simplest melodies, like that of “Cracks in the Causeway”, float over a light 4-minute jam.

Check out “Proofreading” first. For some reason it reminds me of Pete and Pete, the episode where the boys hire Artie to beat up the local vocal group.

The guitars are so technical and solid, how could you not like this one?

It’s spoon! defintely one of my favorite bands of all time and this release does not dissapoint.

“Pencil Rot” has to have the best intro to a quirky pop cd that i have ever heard.

Freak? Folk? Just Plain Crazy? Call it what you want, but its incredibly creative and makes for quite an interesting listen

Can this man write a song or what? Anyone who discovers a town who basically worships superman himself and writes a song about it (”Man of metropolis steals our hearts”) and who plays a mean banjo definitely makes my top 10.

Pure poppy goodness. Brilliant use of multiple bass lines that intertwine. If you ever get a chance to see this band live, jump at it!

Their best effort yet! Mass Romantic comes close, but isn’t quite as good. Dan Bejar’s additions match up to Carl Newman’s for the very first time.

The most immediate record Sigur Ros has released so far. Emotive, ambient with pounding drums and even a 2 minute long track for those without the patience for the epic-lengths.

The Welsh Gods pump out another masterpiece. Tell me lazer beam isn’t one of the catchiest songs you’ve heard all year.

Way more cohesive effort than You Forgot It in People. Even more members. Solid, clunky basslines. Great vocal addtions from Feist. I want them to play my birthday party.

broadcast - tender buttons
if i ever become a haute couture model with a strong coke addiction, i will vomit into the toilet to this record. that’s how much i love it.

jens lekman - oh you’re so silent jens
the most charming swedish record since Ace of Base’s The Sign. plus, he writes songs about anti-war demonstrations. i always wished i would meet a girl at an iraq war protest.

tom vek - we have sound
people keep on describing this record as ‘proletarian’, but i think it’s more of a party boy record. and i like that.

joggers - with a cape and a cane
this record could go it alone on the sheer awesomeness of ‘wicked light sleeper’, but it is so much more. i am still tearing away at the many, many guitar riffs in this jungle.

stephen malkmus - face the truth
everything from a drugged-robot groove (’kindling for the master’) to a song about putting on cleats to climb a shitpile (’pencil rot’). who needs drugs when you have this?

wilderness - wilderness
my friend nick shouts loud at his band’s shows. i think if he listened to this record, he’d have a much better idea of how to do it.

fiery furnaces - ep
this is the fiery furnaces record that convinced me that it matters both very much and not at all what the lyrics are. and any remake of ‘tropical iceland’ is a good one. ff get extra credit for continuing songs about seafaring.

decemberists - picaresque
here the merry band of portland anachronistics eliminate the weaker material that plagued their earlier albums, and pare down the sound to unleash a barrow full of compelling sounds and stories.

wolf parade - apologies to the queen mary
i’m pretty sure i would be held back in hipster school if this didn’t make the list somewhere.

double - loose in the air
this band mostly qualifies because i think of them as an ‘evil’ french kicks. though to be fair the french kicks are themselves dastardly bastards from what i hear. and by ‘what i hear i mean’ their music. duh.

“Slow Burn”, the first track on Hudson Bell’s sophomore release When the Sun is the Moon, begins with a sort of natural sonic emanation that one would expect from the p- and s-waves of an earthquake, quietly rippling through the hillside until the guitarist hits the fuzz pedal and it’s taken straight on into shoegazing territory. Bell’s vocals crow with a timbre reminiscent of those of Issac Brock on “Trailer Trash”, and the singer’s questionably-tuned guitar only furthers the album’s comparison to the earlier work of Modest Mouse and Built to Spill.

The most notable track on the album is “Atlantis Nights”, an uptempo shuffle with meandering guitar fills and the chorus asking “Atlantis, how did it come to this?”. Asking these sort of questions about the apocalypse of a mythological society is exactly what makes Bell and his cohorts so unnaturally charming: while seemingly eccentric, Bell’s goal is not to alienate the listener, though this is not to say that the songs are immediately accessible. “Sea Horse,” a longer track on the album, sounds like yet another ‘acoustic rumination on existential matters’, so subtly grows and grows in volume and sheer size that it turns into a long groove like Songs:Ohia’s “Farewell Transmission”, if less country and solemn.

Psychedelia ain’t what it used to be. No more LSD-induced ragas: gone are the 17-minute epics with unending drum solos. No, San Francisco’s Gris Gris have much more dubious and emancipating plans for the pseudo-sub-genre.

Their latest aural missive, For the Season, finds the erstwhile groovies colliding demonic chants with layers of deadly organs and free-jazz horns on some tracks and hypnotizing the listener en Espanol on yet another (”Cuerpos Haran Amor Extrano”). While the results sound suspiciously reminiscent of some Turtles or Zombies tracks (not to mention the nefarious Turtle-Zombies hybrid), the Gris Gris reinvent the sonic acid trip by multiplying the number of organs involved, thus reclaiming it from its usual incarnations as Acid-House or, dare I say it, Acid-Jazz. Certainly, whatever musical shape acid should take, it should remain nameless. The Gris Gris understand this essential musical maxim, if at times the psychedelic agent creates such a think smoke that it obscures the real elements at play.

Among highlights (or should I say noteworthy trips) of the album is an anti-ode to Jesus with rolling, thumping drums and a melody that fucks with the time signature. “Pick Up Your Raygun”, though it takes about 2 minutes to really get rolling, stands out as well for its apparent malevolence and outright resemblence to “Paint it Black”. Another standout is the anthemic “Year Zero”. And all of this is very enjoyable while sober. Really. For a look at a not-so-sober take on the album, I leave you with my alterego, Bruce Banner:

“Grrrrrr…Evil Tom want play in drum circle!”

Returning with an EP several albums after the release of their instrumental masterpiece Spine and Sensory, San Diego outfit Tristeza hasn’t lost its knack for creepily introspective rock. On Bromas, a short EP out on Better Looking Records, the sort of experimental jazz and pseudo-electronic vibe we’ve come to expect from the band is tighter and considerably less repetitive than earlier works. However, there’s a slight sense that venturing into smooth jazz territory is not always out of the question, and the only element that prevents me from calling ‘Metheny!’ on the EP’s title track is the ominous minor-key structure of the song. It’s certainly been a while since I’ve heard evil easy listening.

“Pingle Language”, the second track, is an ever quieter brooding composed of electronic snare rolls and icy pings in the high register, featuring most notably the absence of jangly guitar that was the signature of their brand of instrumental rock. “Enveloped” mutates this brooding vibe into an ambient shuffle, a sort of unnoticed and hushed prelude into the extended mix of the title track (which doesn’t sound all that different from the original).

Bromas is certainly a mysterious EP in the fact that, at three new tracks, it may only be a single. Even more confounding to the listener is the band’s seeming abandonment of guitar as the centerpiece in the two middle songs of the album. The title track is certainly worth a listen, and the album could be considered a success on that merit alone, however, the additional guitar-less tracks keep me guessing when the guitar is going to come in, and probably intentionally so.

When George Clinton says allstars, he’s not fooling around. Packed to the brim, How Late Do You Have 2BB4UR Absent indeed excercises the gaudy excess of funk with special guests such as Prince, Belita Woods, and Kendra Foster. The 2-disc collection, the latest new work from Clinton in nine years, features an arsenal of different styles. There are some great standard sounding funk tracks such as Bounce 2 This and Paradigm Shift on disc one, as well as Something Stank on disc two. The rest of the tunes are a slew of soul and hip-hop, with the occasional funky guitar riff peppered in the background for good measure. Also, in true funkadelic style, the gritty humor of truly nasty music is present on such tracks as I Can Dance and the bonus track after Booty on disc two. There’s just something about the way the line “Get the fuck out, you got to go over on the other side of the door” is presented that makes you grin when you listen to it.

Which brings us to the last point which should be brought up. There are many, many, many tracks which contain explicit lyrics on this disc set. Honestly, if you have a problem with harsh language, then you might want to steer clear of the George Clinton vein of funk. Although you should be able to expect what you’re gonna get with tracks named U Ain’t Runnin’ Shit. So if you’re checkin’ out da funk for the first time, you might want to try something a little less gritty, or just stick with the clean stand out tracks on the album (Bounce 2 This and Paradigm Shift).