Month: June 2013

Edgy might be a word that some people equate with aging hipsters on the fringe of becoming old enough to be considered cool. However, it also happens to be the most appropriate way to describe the all-girl Brooklyn-based fuzz rock quartet Heliotropes. In a modern indie format largely dominated by harmonies and excessive electronic effects, Heliotropes is a throwback to 1990’s sludge/psychadelia that manages to express a unique style and refuses to stagnate.

On Tuesday, the band dropped the debut LP, A Constant Sea, an album that is anything but constant. Throughout the 16-track presentation is a varied collection of heavily distorted, bluesy rock instrumentals backed by a raw, teeth-gnashing vocal styling. Reminiscent of female-dominated psych-rockers Dum Dum Girls, and indie rocker legends, Sleater-Kinney, Heliotropes provides a generous mix of droning, crooning, fuzz, power chord progression, and visceral lyrical content throughout the album.

Opening with an assault of distorted vamping guitar, the tracks “Early in the Morning” and “Psalms” is just a taste of the variety and range of A Constant Sea. A testament to its ability to beckon emotions of all types, the following track titled Everyone Else is an honest, heartfelt reprieve from the indie/blues bombardment. Middle tracks such as “Good and Evil” and “Ribbons and The Dove” provide the meat of the heavy blues presence in A Constant Sea. Fluctuating from a groove to a wail and back again, the progression of the album is one that builds mood and leads listeners into the darkness and back into the light.

“Psalms” – Heliotropes from A Constant Sea

In appropriate fashion, the latter tracks of the album are pure serenity. Beautiful chord progressions and airy vocals provide a peaceful send off, and are essential in creating the balance that makes A Constant Sea such a well-rounded release. All three tracks that bring the album to a close (“Unadorned,” “Awake,” and “Christine”) have their own style of beauty and rhetoric that drive at separate areas of pain and triumph.

“Early In The Morning” – Heliotropes from A Constant Sea

Although it’s a psychedelic blues album at heart, A Constant Sea provides enough musical divergence to encompass a variety of genres. The album stands out as a collection of tracks, both ugly and pretty, in perfect cohesion. You’ve heard bands like Heliotropes, but in no way is their style copied, contrived, or antiquated. A Constant Sea is the essential album for any listener that longs for the heavy distortion and bittersweet joy found in of indie rock of yesteryear.

Rating: 8

Aaron Rajala is a full-time indie music blogger from Portland. His blog is IndieWireTap.com

by J. Hubner

From the opening horns of “Gemini” to the fading strands of the album’s closer, “Semena Mertvykh,” there isn’t a moment on Boards of Canada’s Tomorrow’s Harvest where you wonder who the artist is. There has been a veritable silence from the direction of Scottish brothers Marcus Eoin and Mike Sandison since the 2006 EP, Trans Canada Highway. The silence has ended and we are all the better for it.

Tomorrow’s Harvest isn’t a rebuild from the ground up; nor is it a retread of past glories. This is an album showing artists being true to themselves and not being anything but what they’ve always been. What’s that? Purveyors of the past and sound tweakers of the future. For a lot of folks the feeling you get listening to a Boards of Canada album is nostalgia. It’s the sound of Juno Synths, Yamaha DX-7s, distorted breakbeats, and a childhood set to repeat play on a Quasar Hi-Fi VCR.

With masterpieces like Music Has The Right To Children, Geogaddi, and The Campfire Headphase, Boards of Canada had a main line into childhood – not a Disney childhood, or an ABC Afterschool Special childhood. Rather, a ‘latch key kid’ childhood. A darkened living room with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a can of New Coke, watching something you shouldn’t on The Movie Channel because your Mom forgot to lock the channel. It’s a childhood of wonder, but with dark spots that could lead to something darker. Tomorrow’s Harvest is the soundtrack to a Choose Your Own Adventures book, a walk home from the city park late at night, or a car ride to the roller skating rink.

“Telepath” is a perfect example of what Boards of Canada do so well. The sound of a man talking and counting would be harmless enough, but it’s what they do to it: they process it, taint it, make it into almost something Orwellian and create something dark out of it. Synths float in the background as the counting becomes more drawn out and more unintelligible. Next, they lead us right into “Cold Earth” with a swath of warm keys and a big beat that brings to mind some sort of futuristic scene. The soundtrack to a new installment of Ice Age, perhaps.

Lead single, “Reach For The Dead,” permeates with a menace via an analog hiss as if a record needs to be flipped. Then a theme emerges through the noise – something resembling a past life soaking in through the present one. It took a few listens, but this song is nearly transcendent in how it works its magic on you. “New Seeds” brings a pep in Boards of Canada’s step not heard in earlier tracks. There seems to be less of the media clips from earlier albums and more of Marcus and Mike’s own magic used to create those lonely days of childhood where you were left to fend for yourself. Another track, “Come To Dust,” is a sci-fi dream, floating in the ether.

“Reach For The Dead” – Boards of Canada from Tomorrow’s Harvest on Warp Records

I’ve had to sit with this album for a week before I could attempt to put my feelings about it into words. Even now, I’m not sure I can do this album justice. Tomorrow’s Harvest doesn’t change up or replicate Boards of Canada’s past. What it does is refine their sound to its essence. They make the synthetic seem organic. That’s been their gift since the beginning. Tomorrow’s Harvest ranks as one of their finest achievements, and one of the best albums of the year so far. Good to be back in Boards of Canada’s head space; or head phase.

Rating: 9.5

J. Hubner is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to Indie Rock Cafe.

by J. Hubner

Deafheaven‘s Sunbather is one of those anomalies that happens every so often in metal music where you’re moved to your core listening to the aural violence. Singer George Clark sounds like Deftones’ Chino Moreno having some sort of attack as songwriter/guitarist Kerry McCoy creates transcendent -albeit bludgeoning- music that sweeps you up in the drama of life and existence. Sunbather sounds like what would happen if Explosions In The Sky dabbled in black metal. It’s a record that comes around every so often, and when it does all you can do is let it wash over you.

“Dream House” is a wall of guitars, and ebb and flow of dramatic sweeps and moods. This is what happens when post-rock goes through primal scream therapy. I imagine Mogwai was brought up once or twice in the studio while recording this epic opening track. A barrage of guitars bash against each other as if waves pummeling the lone schooner in a black ocean. Clark screams orders till the storm calms as the piano and echoed guitar of “Irresistible” steps in during a moment of solace, quietly taking us into the ten minute title track. Deftones haunt the sound of this song, not only in the shredded vocal cords but McCoy’s exquisite guitar. His guitar is a sound filled with both guttural pain and heavenly scope; you feel as you listen to Deafheaven that you’re listening to a great epic tale – much like Homer’s Odyssey- put to music. This is a journey record (and not that “Don’t Stop Believin’ junk). “Please Remember” starts as noise and increases in intensity climaxing to a buzzsaw screech before dissipating into a quietly strummed guitar. Ebb and flow.

“Dream House” – Deafheaven from Sunbather

This album isn’t for the weak of heart or ear. It’s a trip filled with good and bad. It’s a journey filled with as much pain as pleasure. What makes this record a journey worth taking over and over again is songwriter/guitarist Kerry McCoy. He takes metal and hardcore music and gives it something that too often is missing in both: depth. At times there’s a downright shimmering quality to his playing that sounds like Johnny Marr filling in for Porl Thompson on Disintegration. “Vertigo” has a shoegaze swirl about it before going into an almost Euro-metal guitar lead that opens the gates for George Clark‘s banshee howl. “Window” is a swirl of dread. A voice speaks in the background as piano plays and ambient noise comes in and out of focus before “The Pecan Tree” closes the dizzying journey called Sunbather.

Listen to the entire album via Spotify.

Bands like Explosions In The Sky, Mogwai, and even My Bloody Valentine are woven into Deafheaven’s DNA. I’m sure there’s some black metal and hardcore bands that were a basis for these guys wanting to make music as well, but I haven’t the ear or listening experience to throw those names around. All I can say is Sunbather is Deafheaven taking all of those influences and creating something unique and moving all their own. It’s not an easy journey, but one you should take. One you must take.

8.7 out of 10

J. Hubner is a freelance writer and music lover who occasionally contributes his own unique style of album reviews to IRC.

by Devin William Daniels

Camera Obscura‘s new album, Desire Lines, is a dreamy and pristine offering, a reverse time capsule of pop music from a past that never existed. The high and heartbroken denizens of Rick Deckard‘s Los Angeles would probably find it nostalgic; in 2013, it’s just a blur. The record is covered in the musical equivalent of the new car smell. It’s undeniably new – the leather’s unworn, the windshield will never be more clear – yet also evokes the spirit of the ‘classic.’

Camera Obscura possesses a pop sensibility that clashes with the modern idea of pop. The songs are clean and appealing, lacking in the cynical devotion to familiarity that dominates the radio waves. Camera Obscura’s pop sound is not exactly old school, though. The melancholic, oneiric overtones and the trip-hop guitar lines do not neatly fit into past traditions and would unlikely top the pop charts. However, one could imagine a record like Desire Lines in regular rotation if the musical dominoes had fallen a little differently. It’s like the retro-can of Dr. Pepper made with real sugar and without Iron Man 3 promo labels – nostalgia in the form of a modern commodity – and that strange sense of temporality is the dominant experience of the album.

An attentive listener of the album may call it “boring,” and perhaps “great background music” – which are not the most flattering of epithets; and yet, so effective is its hypnotic atmosphere that whatever mundane activity occupies the listeners’ “foreground” becomes undeniably colored by the “background.”

Of course, some would argue that the point of a record is to supply great songs, and Desire Lines does not necessarily succeed in that regard. Individual tracks rarely come out and grab you, which separates it from the hook-and-hit focus of much of indie pop, for both good and bad. When there are songs that do stand out, it’s usually due to an incongruous break of the mood rather than a moment of pop transcendence. “Do It Again” – around the album’s midpoint – is the most guilty of this offense; but, it didn’t take long for the following song, the wonderfully arranged, “Cri du Ceour,” to bring me back under the spell.

In the final analysis, Desire Lines is high on atmosphere and low on substance. Upon inspection, the individual elements of the record are lacking in much positive content. Hooks are largely missing, and when they are, they’re quite weak. Tracyanne Campbell’s vocals are technically strong but end up sounding like buttered toast; you can get these vocals anywhere, and there’s little reason to make a special trip.

Campbell sacrifices individuality and affect for dreaminess, without capturing the unique haunting vocalizations of an artist like Victoria Legrand. Campbell’s voice is paired with well-arranged instruments that are at worst, precise, and at best, brilliant. But she never really makes the songs her own amongst all the technical wizardry of the production. We’re left with a well-executed, consistent dream pop album that never really breaks out into a run, but it’s a fairly enjoyable sleepwalk.

“Fifth In Line to the Throne” – Camera Obscrua from Desire Lines

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Rating: 6.5 of 10

Devin William Daniels is a freelance writer and musician from Allentown, Pennsylvania. He teaches English in South Korea and records music as the Negative Sound