Sink Tapes, Touchdown Buffalo, 2014

Monday Run Album Review

Part of the reason that the Sunday Run Album Review disappeared from this space was that I'd found it nearly impossible to run consistently without aggravating one or more of a few nagging injuries. Most of that sad episode seems to be behind me now, so I've been trying to get back after it. I had big plans for Sunday, but a Saturday run coupled with about 6 straight hours of standing on Saturday night made Sunday a rest day for me. Monday, though, I was back at it; and I took the latest from Sink Tapes out with me.

Sink Tapes are slowly but surely growing into one of my favorite not just New Jersey bands, but bands overall. Over just the last two years, the New Brunswick quartet have churned out three excellent full-length albums and a fantastic EP. The band's latest, Touchdown Buffalo, reaches back into Sink Tapes' deep well of influences and continues a staggeringly consistent run of solid output.

The album opens with the percussive noise and trem-enhanced guitar chords of "I Told You to Trade It." The track finds Sink Tapes at their most Jesus and Mary Chain, and that continues through the roomy-sounding "Small Thought." Third track and lush album standout "Vegas Hotel Yoga Spa" (where you can socialize, get moisturized, dry your eyes, be institutionalized) moves into Psychedelic Furs territory and -- like its album-closing, acoustic demo version or How You Mean's "Your Mouth Is On My Mind" -- shows what Sink Tapes can do when they extend their ideas past the three-minute mark.

And if I have one complaint about Touch Down Buffalo, it's that the songs are too, damn short. Just as the "La la la" comes in on the Beulah-tinged "Dishes In The Dark," the song begins its fade. Similarly, "What Wants, What Needs" disappears just as it kicks in its mini crescendo. Many of the songs here are like something delicious that you pop into your mouth only to have it dissolve away, leaving you rifling through the package for just one more crumb. Always leave them wanting more, I guess.

And, on the plus side, I'm such a slow runner now that I was able to get through almost two full listens over the course of 5K.

Touchdown Bufflalo is out now on Front Row Records / Mint 400 Records and available as a cassette / digital download from Sink Tapes' Bandcamp page. You can also get it from your favorite retailer of downloadable music.

Superchunk, I Hate Music, 2013

Saturday Elliptical Album Review

After last weekend, I wanted to keep the Sunday Run Album Review going as a motivational tool for myself. A motivational tool for Sundays, anyway. With CoolMom away, though, I was on swim meet duty this Sunday. A run wasn't going to happen. But in a rare moment of efficient time management for me, I managed to hop on the elliptical at the Y while CoolDaughter #2 had her swim class on Saturday. I used my time to correct what has been an egregious oversight on my part since the summer. I listened to Superchunk's latest, I Hate Music, with the goal of finally saying something about it here.

This album has stumped me a bit. It's always hardest for me to review something when all I can keep thinking to myself is, "I love this record." I love this record.

I tried to think about what I love about it, and then it dawned on me. A while back, I posted the video for I Hate Music track, "Void." Shot at Brooklyn's Shea Stadium, the video depicts a group of middle-aged folks (Superchunk members Jon Wurster, Laura Ballance, and Jim Wilbur and writers / actors Jon Benjamin, Jon Glaser, and Ted Travelstead) attending a rock show at the venue. In my haste to say, "This video is making fun of old people like me. Ha ha ha," I missed the point. After a few cringeworthy minutes of the group's experience at Shea, the video ends on a beautifully uplifting note that would seem to say that you're never too old to be moved to joy by music.

On their follow-up to 2010's excellent Majesty Shredding, which was the band's first record in almost a decade, Superchunk show that they're just getting better with time. Solid from beginning to end, I Hate Music drenches its sometimes melancholy lyrics (The album is dedicated to a close friend of the band who died in 2012.) in the upbeat sounds that have always characterized the band.

From fantastic opener, "Overflows," ("Everything that you won't see, just swirls around, comes down and buries me.") to album-closer, "What Can We Do," with its images of a couple with "wrinkles around [their] eyes," I Hate Music shows itself to be an album that could only have been made by a band with some mileage on the odometer. Single "Me & You & Jackie Mittoo" -- the song that opens with the album's titular phrase and continues, "What is it worth? Can't bring anyone back to this earth" -- paints a picture of riding around, feet on the dashboard, listening to your favorite music. "Trees of Barcelona" describes exploring that great city with friends following a festival appearance.

Guitarist Jim Wilbur is positively J Mascisian on "Low F," a song that would have made my Favorite Songs of 2013 Playist if it weren't for my stupid rules. Other standouts, "FOH," and just-over-one-minute burner, "Staying Home," showcase Superchunk at their frantic best.

Even the title of this one speaks to me. I love music. It's a huge part of my life; and, as I've said before, I associate one song or another with almost every important moment. But, after a while, you realize that your favorite music, your favorite songs aren't the things that are really ever going to save you, change your life, or pull you up during your lowest moments. That's all on you. It's easy, sometimes, to hate music for making you think it could do that for you.

Then you hear something like I Hate Music; and you can say, "Yeah. I've got a lot of work ahead of me. Just give me about 40 minutes. I'm gonna go listen to this record, and then I'll be ready for anything."

I Hate Music is out now on Merge.

Ovlov, am, 2013

Sunday Run Album Review Is Back!

I'll admit it. I've been letting myself go a little bit. Going to so many shows often means staying up late and enjoying a few beverages. That's played havoc with what used to be my almost daily run. I've also kept myself pretty busy with work, the blog, and the cooldaughters throughout the day. That's given me plenty of excuses to miss my runs most days.

Yesterday was December 1st. New month. Almost a new year. I decided to see if I can't get myself back on track. I hadn't planned on bringing back the Sunday Run Album Review, but yesterday I took am by Ovlov out with me on my short comeback jog (thanks to a recommendation from Mike V in his Best of 2013 post). Once I heard the record, I had to write about it.

Ovlov, from Newtown, CT, are the trio of Steve, Theo, and Jon Hartlett. On am they receive assists from several friends, including Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz. Dupuis figures prominently on opening track "Grapes," providing the female half of the male / female harmonies that, combined with the heavily distorted guitar noise, give the track a very My Bloody Valentine-esque feel. Album-closer "The Great Alligator" goes to that well again with some buried-in-the-mix vocals and what sounds like some tremolo-assisted strumming.

After the My Bloody Valentine show at Hammerstein Ballroom a few weeks ago, I left thinking about how MBV have evolved almost past the point of creating "songs." The band got me thinking about pure sound and how sound can cause your brain to conjure up its own images and feelings. Ovlov haven't yet taken things that far. The songs on am still possess, for the most part, conventional structures and achieve what bands like Dinosaur Jr., Nirvana, and The Pixies have been so successful with over the years: Bathing more traditional rock and pop in noise and distortion. Playing with sounds, but still making songs.

"The Well" and "Milk" feature some discernible lead guitar lines poking out through the fuzz. Standout track "Where's My Dini?" is downright pretty as it builds to a crescendo of noise; and companion piece "There's My Dini!," with its spoken verse and singsongy chorus is pure Pixies-inspired noise pop.

I've pointed out before that there have been several records this year that deal in the sounds of 1990's indie and alt-rock. am definitely qualifies as another entry in this group, but I don't think it's a pure nostalgia piece. Instead, I think the best bands in this category -- and, based on am, Ovlov is one of them -- employ the sounds of the last, great era of rock music in the service of producing some excellent songs.

am is out now on Exploding In Sound Records. I think I'll take it out again with me on a run today. 2 days in the month, 2 runs. I'm on a roll!

Swearin', Swearin', 2012

Sunday Run Album Review

I saw a Facebook post the other day, by a music journalist I really respect, pointing out and kind of lamenting the fact that if one were to remove all of the twenty-something artists from Pitchfork's "Top 50 Albums of 2012" list, there'd only be five or six records left.  I wasn't particularly surprised or upset by this, but it started me wondering why most of the best pop / mindie music is produced by people whom I'd basically consider kids.  More to the point, why are these kids able to produce music that can connect with someone, like me, twenty years older than they are?

I think it's a combination of two things.  First, nobody ever really changes.  You go through your whole life with the same brain and all of its thought processes, insecurities, worries, etc.  Second, twenty-something kids haven't learned all the ways to rationalize those feelings and keep them bottled up inside.  Instead, they pour it all out on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, or into their songs.  So, what you end up with is a bunch of kids creating music from their twenty-something year-old brains that is able to touch people of all ages.  That's important.  With most of us adults walking around and being socially acceptable, someone needs to speak up for the way none of us have ever really stopped feeling.

I thought about this while I jogged around my neighborhood for the first time in a while listening to the self-titled, debut full-length by Swearin'.  Kyle Gilbride and Allison Crutchfield (twin sister and former P.S. Eliot bandmate of Waxahatchee's Katie Crutchfield) share songwriting duties on Swearin'.  What they've produced is a combination of pop punk and 1990's indie rock that contains traces of Built to Spill, The Breeders, and early Liz Phair.  On many of the songs, Gilbride and Crutchfield touch on some thoughts that never quite leave you just because you get older.

On "Here to Hear," Gilbride (sounding quite a bit like Doug Martsch) sings, "Moving back here / Feeling too self-aware / I keep thinking, / "Is this as good as it gets?"  The pointedly titled "Fat Chance" sees Crutchfield promising, "I'll move out of this house. / I will get my own place. / Get noticed, get in pictures. / I will paint my face."  Gilbride sounds older than his years again on "Empty Head" as he says, "I collect the blurry past into my empty head, / And it’s sad to want it back…"

Swearin' is a solid debut from a band moving beyond its pop punk DNA.  The songwriting is wrapped up in the sounds of early indie rock, but it manages not to sound dated or nostalgic.

"No one likes you when you're as old as we are," sings Crutchfield on album closer "Movie Star."  She hits on something there.  People my age can be dismissive of these kids and all their whining.  If you think about it for a second, though, that may be because they're reminding us of things that we taught ourselves to forget about years ago.

You can stream or purchase Swearin' over at the band's Bandcamp page.

Seapony, Falling, 2012

Sunday Run Album Review

And the long holiday weekend comes to an end.  It started with a cathartic evening at The Stone Pony, and it proceeded through some lazy days during which I had the opportunity to give thanks, kick back, and take stock.  Today, I was ready for something comfortable.

"Comfortable" probably isn't the word I'd use to describe how I've felt on my last few runs, but today's running partners, Seattle's Seapony, have a sound that I always find comforting.  Falling is Seapony's second LP with Hardly Art Records, and it's a collection of reverb-heavy, dreamy, coastal pop.

The album opens with "Outside," which features Jen Weidl's airy vocals surrounded by Danny Rowland's rubber-bandy guitar.  The song follows a pattern common to most of the songs on the record:  a repeated riff or two supporting Weidl singing about longing, being alone, falling.  Because of this, Falling could have ended up as an unvaried collection of repetitive pop songs.  Subtle embellishments, though, work to keep things fresh.  There are the discordant sound effects following the first verse on "Tell Me So." "No One Will" is the album's standout track, and its increased tempo comes at just the right moment.  Seapony also throw in some nods to early influencers of dream pop with things like the post-punk, opening riff of "Prove to Me" and the Johnny Marr-style guitar of "See Me Cry."

There's no shortage of bands mining the same sounds as Seapony right now.  Listening to Falling, it's easy to be struck by similarities to bands like Cults, Real Estate, Tennis, and Eternal Summers.  A closer listen, though, reveals that Seapony are doing their own thing.  It's almost as if Seapony are such students of jangly, dreamy pop that they know just where to tweak it to make it their own.

And there's something in my personal make-up that makes me just love this stuff.  I could listen to it all day.  It's just so comfortable.

METZ, METZ, 2012

Return of the Sunday Run Album Review

We took the kids to Disney World last weekend.  I'm not really a Disney guy.  The place, with its multitude of resort properties, hugely complex private transportation system, and weird corporate culture where employees are "cast members" and jobs are "roles," conjures images of Gibsonesque corporatist dystopia for me. Except for the nighttime spectacle / acid trip / fever dream that is the Magic Kingdom's Electrical Parade, nothing at Disney World really has any "edge."  Millions of people, my kids included, love it, though.  And I will say that the degree to which Disney caters to people with special needs is truly impressive and commendable.

Sandy's aftermath and the eighteen miles per day that CoolMom had us walking around each of Disney World's theme parks made for some nice excuses to get out of my normal running routine.  I needed something to get me back onto the right track fitness-wise, and my curmudgeonly nature needed something to counteract the sweet happiness of The Most Magical Place on Earth.  Toronto's METZ proved to be just the thing.

METZ are the trio of Hayden Menzies, Alex Edkins, and Chris Slorach.  The band's self-titled debut on Sub Pop is a thirty-minute, relentless onslaught of machine gun guitar, bass, and drums.  Brain rattling opening track "Headache," with its "chorus" of "Gotta get away," hits with a power that's surprising for a two-minute song.  The same can be said of "Get Off."  Edkins gives his best Johnny Lydon vocal delivery on "Rats," and "Negative Space" comes on like a harder-edged, early eighties, brit-punk aerial assault.

METZ is aggressive, but all of the songs are well-crafted.  A first pass leaves the listener dazed from the aural assault, but repeated listens to songs like "Knife in the Water" and "The Mule" reveal an attention to both detail and songcraft.  "Gotta get away," "Get off," and "Gotta get out of this place" are all lyrics that could indicate that someone or something is trying to escape from somewhere.  In the case of METZ, it could be the traditionally well-crafted pop song trying to break free from all of the noise.

I'd been wallowing a bit lately, relying on excuses like work, travel, and Sandy to keep myself, literally, from moving.  Sometimes we all need a swift kick in the ass to set us back on the right course.  METZ did that for me this afternoon.  It also showed me that pent up energy and aggression, properly harnessed and doled out in just the right dose, can be something great.

The Fresh & Onlys, Long Slow Dance, 2012

Sunday Run Album Review

I was born in 1970.  While I do remember some flashes of my first five years in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn -- the general layout of my family's apartment, helping my father pick out his 1969 Dodge Dart, my parents bringing my new brother home from the hospital -- I don't remember much before about 1975, the year we moved to New Jersey.  As much as I'd like to say that I was right there for the birth of New Wave in the mid 70s, I think I was a bit more concerned with learning to ride a bike and with somehow turning myself into a Yankee fan as some sort of pre-teen rebellion against my familiy's National League bias.  As the mid 70s turned into the late 70s and early 80s, I probably started thinking about girls.

Terms like "new wave," "post punk," even "punk" probably have their own specific meanings in an academic, musical criticism sense.  To me, like "psychedelic," they only have meaning in terms of the sounds they call up in my head.  "New wave" is mid 70s / early 80s Cars, Joe Jackson, Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, The Knack, etc.  PunkISH, I guess.  But also much more concerned with musicality and poppiness.  That's what I kept thinking about as I (finally) ran through the neighborhood yesterday listening to Long Slow Dance, the latest from San Francisco's The Fresh & Onlys.

Long Slow Dance is the band's fourth LP, and it's my first encounter with them.  There's an unmistakable "new-waviness" to the entire album.  "Fire Alarm" and "Euphoria" are the straight-ahead, early MTV, new wave tracks.  New wave combines, though, with a western or country sound on several songs.  On songs like opener "20 Days and 20 Nights," the title track, "Presence of Mind," and "Dream Girls," the Ennio Morricone-sounding guitar leads combine with the rhythm to provide an expansiveness that works really nicely with the romantic, lovelorn lyrics.  Tim Cohen sings with a sense of pleading and desperation as he warns us all about the dangers of love.

The vinyl version of Long Slow Dance is available as a limited-edition, clear LP (Mexican Summer).  That's the version I have.  It's appropriate as there's a "glassiness" to the album's production, as if it were all recorded inside a giant snow globe with the sounds bouncing and echoing everywhere.

I worry sometimes that so much of mindie, and pop in general, derives its sound from an earlier time.  It's hard to fault a band like The Fresh & Onlys, though, when they produce an album like Long Slow Dance.  Sure, there are definite retro aspects to the sounds and themes.  But part of what makes popular music popular is that it's able to grab something inside of you and take you someplace.  It's really effective if it can do that without being corny or clichéd.  As I plodded along past my old grade school yesterday, I couldn't help thinking about sitting in the backseat of one of my parents' Darts (we had a Swinger, too), wondering why some girl in my fourth-grade class never looked at me.

Wild Nothing, Nocturne, 2012

Sunday Run Album Review

Why do we like certain things and not like other things?  How do you describe how something sounds?  That's what I think about every time I decide to do one of these album reviews.  Music is one of those areas, like politics or sports or religion, where people often speak in absolutes.  "Nickelback is the worst band in the world!"  "Kid A is the greatest album ever recorded."  I try not to do too much of that here.  For better or for worse, I try to latch onto the positive aspects of the things I hear, even if they don't really grab me on the initial listen.  Someone likes most of this stuff, after all.

Sometimes, though, I come across something that I really like and want to review here; but I just can't figure out what I like about it.  Or, more precisely, I can't figure out a way to put into words the reasons I like it.  That's what's been happening with Nocturne by Wild Nothing.  I've been listening to, and enjoying, the record since its release.  I just haven't been able to figure out what to say about it.  I took it for a run today and decided to give it a try.

Wild Nothing is Blacksburg, Virginia's Jack Tatum, and Nocturne is his sophomore full-length.  Like Captured Tracks labelmates, DIIV, Wild Nothing mines the 1980's post-punk sound.  While DIIV tends toward the darker aspects of that sound, though, Wild Nothing follows that sound's evolution to shimmering pop on Nocturne.

The record opens with "Shadow" and its I-feel-like-I've-heard-this-somewhere-before, Cure-inspired riff.  That riff runs through the entire song and sticks in your head long after the first listen.  The title track combines guitars, synths, and vocals into a meticulously produced package in a way similar to what's been so successful for a band like Phoenix.  The jangly guitar that runs through "Only Heather" is a sound I've been in love with for a few years now.  Before I even knew its title, "This Chain Won't Break" reminded me, on some level, of Erasure's "Chains of Love."  It still does.  Though when I compare the songs side-by-side, it's less obvious to me.  Some of that 1980's darkness does show up on tracks "Paradise" and "The Blue Dress."

Maybe it's the way in which Tatum takes these different styles and creates a wonderfully unified album that makes it difficult for me to pinpoint exactly what it is that I find so appealing.  But Nocturne is one of those rare albums that works well both as background music -- there aren't any jarring shifts or songs that don't fit -- and as something that rewards critical listening.

And I've been in a bit of a 1990's mode lately, attending concerts by Sebadoh and Built to Spill and hungrily pre-ordering albums by Bob Mould and Dinosaur Jr.  I know what I like about those bands:  clever songwriting, guitars, loudness, noise, all wrapped up in a poppiness and a sense of time and place.  Nocturne is more subtle than that.  I think it's just taken a while to reconfigure my mind into appreciating a different, but still familiar, sound that takes me to a different time and a different place.

The Ugly Club, You Belong to the Minutes, 2012

Sunday Run Album Review

I take vacation twice in the summer.  Once at the beginning, around Fourth of July, usually just me.  Then, again as the summer winds down and CoolDaughters 1 & 2 are on their two-week break from camp before school starts.  This week we're staying around the lovely Jersey Shore to take advantage of all the stuff we've been too busy to do all summer.  It'll be a week of beach, theme parks, and the end of summer Fair Haven Firemen's Fair.

Since this is going to be a New Jersey-themed week, I thought I'd take a New Jersey band with me to the beach on Saturday and for my run last evening.  The Ugly Club are a five-piece based out of Union County, NJ.  I'd been hearing a lot about their debut, You Belong to the Minutes, so I decided to give it a try.

Album opener and lead single, "David Foster Wallace," with its arrangement and Ryan Egan's vocals, immediately evokes some of the more soulful numbers from Spoon.  And, of course, I find its title immediately appealing.  From there, the band moves through a variety of sounds.  Taylor Mandel's keyboards and piano usually feature prominently.  There's the polished, epic Coldplay-like pop of "Under the Great Wave."  The Spoon influence is present again on "Loosen Up," but then that track closes with a funk jam that wouldn't seem out of place at a live show in a small club.  The first half of "Let's Sleep Around" features Egan doing an impressive falsetto and moves into the most straight-ahead pop rock on the album in its second half.  The title track closes the album with six minutes of an almost motorik beat (think Wilco's "Spiders (Kidsmoke)") and some distorted guitar jamming.

For me, the word that kept popping into my head as I listened to You Belong to the Minutes was "polish."  The Ugly Club have a distinctive sound that combines mindie-pop, funk, and jazz in a very well put together package.  If you've read this blog for any length of time, then you probably know that I enjoy a little more edge or roughness.  That edge is on You Belong to the Minutes in several spots like "David Foster Wallace," "Loosen Up," and the last minute or so of "Unraveling You."  Those are the parts of the record that really work best for me.  That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the rest of the album.  The musicianship and the songwriting on You Belong to the Minutes make the whole record a worthwhile listen.

I can see The Ugly Club's sound taking them very far.  Their sound combines a wide-ranging appeal with an intelligence that big-time popular music could really use right now.  I may be sticking around New Jersey for a little while, but I don't think The Ugly Club will be hanging around just New Jersey for too much longer.

You Belong to the Minutes came out in July and is available as a $1+ download from The Ugly Club's Bandcamp site.

PS I Love You, Death Dreams, 2012

Sunday Run Album Review

I buy a lot of albums.  Digital, vinyl, even the occasional CD.  Sometimes, what happens is that I buy something, love it, then get wrapped up in other stuff and kind of forget about it.  That's happened with several records this year.

Given that not many of the newer releases have been grabbing me lately, I was kind of stuck this weekend about what I should review.  I do plan on getting around to talking in detail about the great, new albums from Spook Houses and Sleepies; but I wanted to curb some of my obsessive tendencies and break the posts up a bit this week.  Then I remembered PS I Love You.  I decided to go back to their release from all the way back in May of 2012, Death Dreams, and I took it out for a run with me this weekend.

I came across Death Dreams right about the time that Japandroids released Celebration Rock.  Another guitar / drum duo from Canada, PS I Love You are Paul Saulnier (guitar / bass / vocals) and Ben Nelson (drums).  Coming to Death Dreams after hearing Celebration Rock made for an interesting opportunity to contrast the album by Vancouver's Japandroids, and all of its youthful exuberance, with the Ontario duo's collection of songs inspired, according to the Paper Bag Records write-up about the band, by Saulnier's dreams about his own mortality while on tour.  I really like both albums, but something about Death Dreams appeals to my darker side.

And it isn't just the album's origin story that gives it its edge.  Much of the sound is rooted in eighties and nineties alternative guitar rock.  There's even a big, seventies almost glam rock sound on "Sentimental Dishes." "Don't Go" features a chiming, melodic riff over heavier, distorted rhythms.  "Future Dontcare" and "How Do You" achieve that kind of mid-eighties wall of sound.  There's more straight-up punk on "Toronto" and "Princess Tower."  "Saskatoon" moseys along on a slackery, almost Pavement-like vibe.  And the Mascis-esque guitar on "Red Quarter" is one of the album's highlights for me (there's my obsessive fanboyism again).

It would be silly to underestimate the contribution of Nelson's drumming to a band that consists of just two members.  Nelson does an excellent job providing the foundation for PS I Love You's sound, but it's Saulnier's guitar, and the varying ways he puts it to use, along with his yelp of a voice that really stand out on Death Dreams.

I've really loved several of 2012's "noisier" albums:  Japandroids' Celebration Rock, Cloud Nothings' Attack on Memory, Screaming Females' Ugly, and The Men's Open Your Heart.  Death Dreams belongs right up there with them, and I didn't want it to get lost in the shuffle.  I'm glad I went back to it, and I don't think I'll forget about it again.

Eternal Summers, Correct Behavior, 2012

Saturday Run / Sunday Cocktail Hour Album Review

I'm not good with Augusts or with Sundays.  I enjoy the summer and the weekend too much relative to the rest of the year or the rest of the week, and I always get a little depressed as either comes to an end.  As my friend MomVee points out over at Watering Place, August does have a lot going for it.  We usually take a family vacation right before Labor Day.  Sundays, too, are usually nice days.  CoolMom and I took a nice, long bike ride, and we went swimming with the kids.  I just can't get over that feeling that something good is ending.

One of the really nice things about August, though, is that CoolDaughter #1 has a month off from competitive swimming.  This means that I've got a little more freedom on Saturdays than I do the rest of the year.  I thought a band called Eternal Summers may be the perfect antidote for my August melancholy, so I took the latest from the Roanoke trio, Correct Behavior, out for a Saturday run.  I also played it for CoolMom while we enjoyed some pre-dinner margaritas on Sunday night.

Eternal Summers are Nicole Yun, Daniel Cundiff, and Jonathan Woods.  In a general sense, I guess the band would fall into the dream pop category.  Their sound has much more of an edge to it, though, than  than the music of the genre's standard-bearer, Beach House.

The record opens with the bell-like guitar tones of "Millions."  That's a sound that can always pull me right in, and, paired with Yun's vocals, it makes for a strong beginning.  "You Kill" features some big, 1990's guitar riffs, and "Girls in the City," this time with Cundiff doing a spoken-word vocal, goes for a  post-punk, shoegaze sound.  "Good As You" is a beautiful song that sounds like a lost Sundays track.

Correct Behavior comes in at just over thirty minutes, so it was perfect for my just over three-mile run.  As I got home, the last track, appropriately titled "Summerset," was just ending.  I was a little sad.  I'd really enjoyed the album and wished it were longer.  I didn't realize that I had my player set on repeat, so I was pleasantly surprised when that guitar from "Millions" kicked right in again.

Summer's ending.  The weekend is over.  They'll be back, though.  In the meantime, I'll have records like Correct Behavior to remind me of them for a short time while I wait.

Oh, and CoolMom loved it.

Passion Pit, Gossamer, 2012

Sunday Run Album Review

I feel like I've been getting away from the "mainstream indie" part of this blog's original mission.  Local music, Asbury Park, the saga of my broken mobile phone:  all stuff that's been on my mind lately, but I think I've gotten a little off-topic.

I resolved, therefore, this weekend to take a look at one of the big releases from the last few weeks.  Passion Pit are one of those synth-heavy bands that fall outside the boundaries of my normal listening. After thinking about it, though, I was reminded that I absolutely loved "The Reeling," "Sleepyhead," and "Little Secrets" from their debut album, 2009's Manners.  I decided I'd take Gossamer out on a hot, hot run on both Saturday and Sunday.

From the church-like synths that open the album and lead into "Take a Walk"'s march of immigrant hardship, Gossamer moves through the sounds of 80's synth pop on "Carried Away," slow grooving R&B -- perfect for a hot day on the pavement -- on "Constant Conversations," and Soft Bulletin-era Flaming Lips on "Love Is Greed."  The overall effect is cinematic, almost like a soundtrack.

The plot of the story revolves around frontman, Michael Angelakos, beating himself up over his failings.  "You should go if you want to," he sings to his partner on "I'll Be Alright;"  "This madness is my fault alone," on "On My Way;" "Hurting her is too maddening," on "Hideaway."  All of this is bathed in soaring, sometimes extremely upbeat-sounding, synths and Passion Pit's trademark high-pitched and distorted vocals.

Only on album-closer "Where We Belong" does Angelakos get a little slack.  "All the things you can't control should never destroy your love or hopes...  I found a place where we belong."  Sounds like she's staying after all.

I'm a little surprised at how much I like this record.  It's full of a lot more emotion than I'd usually expect from music that relies so heavily on electronics and vocal effects.  The record, though, is dense with warmth and feeling.  It also sounds just great.

The Gaslight Anthem, Handwritten, 2012

Sunday (Didn't) Run Album Review

One of the surest ways of having your motives questioned or to experience public backlash is to appear sincere.  As a culture, lately, I think we value irony and sarcasm over expressions of true emotion.  I'm guilty of this myself.  As I watch the the post-competition Olympic interviews, I can't help myself from unconsciously adding the phrase "...to earn millions of dollars in endorsement deals" to every tearful "This is a dream come true" from the winning athletes.  I think this type of cynicism works against a band like The Gaslight Anthem, at least when their work gets reviewed.

Like a good New Jerseyan, I bought Handwritten, the latest from this New Jersey band, on the day of its realease.  I haven't run with it yet, but I listened to the record throughout the weekend.

Lead vocalist and principal songwriter Brian Fallon delivers each lyric at the level of "all out."  He's so sincere, so earnest that you think, on some level, this has to be a put-on.  But I don't think it is.  The album, like its predecessors, is a collection of big, romantic rock songs full of nostalgia, "Hey-eyyy-eyyy's," and "sha-la-la's."

Lead single and album opener "45" tells you a lot of what you need to know about where Fallon is coming from as a songwriter.  His hands are shaking; his heart is bleeding; and he pours that heart into the chorus "Aaah-eyy, turn the record over! Aaah-eyy, see you on the flip side!" at a time when many of his fans probably have only a passing familiarity with vinyl records.  On the title track, Fallon once again shows his love of the old ways, singing, "We only write by the moon, every word handwritten."

Some of the best lyrics on the record, and I mean this in all seriousness, revolve around cars.  "In the deep, dark parking lot pressed up against my car" on "Mulholland Drive" or "See if you wanna, you can find me on the hood under the moonlight" on album standout "Howl" conjure some very young-in-the-Jersey-burbs images for me.

Musically, Handwritten, unsurprisingly, doesn't break any new ground.  Almost all of the songs have a big, 1990's alternative rock sound.  "Too Much Blood" even has a bit of a Soundgarden feel to it with its big guitar chords and Fallon's Chris Cornell impression.  Guitarist Alex Rosamilia has given almost every song its own distinctive and recognizable riff.  Mostly acoustic album closer "National Anthem" comes as a bit of a (welcome) surprise after ten stadium-sized rock anthems.

The Gaslight Anthem are an unselfconscious, sincere, earnest band of New Jersey romantics.  If you're someone a little more into subtlety, irony, or musical innovation, then Handwritten is likely to push all of the wrong buttons for you.  That was my initial reaction.  But after spending some time with the record, I realized that it can sometimes be cathartic to drop all of that baggage and to just try to enjoy the songs.

Look at that.  I did a Gaslight Anthem review and didn't even mention Bruce Springsteen once.  Right?

The Mynabirds, Generals, 2012

Sunday Run Album Review

The U.S. has been actively enmeshed in several wars for more than a decade.  We've seen the effects of this fact on popular culture with television series like Lost and 24 and in movies like the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy.  Surprisingly, it doesn't feel like we've heard much from popular music about the wars or, for that matter, the economic malaise of the last five or so years.  Springsteen did Magic and Wrecking Ball; Neil Young did Living with War;  and we got Iraq from Black 47.  Those guys, though, are really part of pop music's "old guard."  To my knowledge, there's been a real scarcity of music tackling our current situation from newer acts.

I'd heard that Laura Burhenn's Mynabirds project did take on these issues, and -- I guess this explains a lot -- I kind of avoided it for a while.  Having been stirred up by Woody Guthrie and Billy Bragg in recent weeks, though, I decided to take The Mynabirds' latest, Generals, out on a run with me today.

It's a tricky thing, getting political in music.  Generals strikes an excellent balance.  The martial beats and calls to arms are countered by pop hooks and Burhenn's soulful singing voice.  The album opens with "Karma Debt" in which Burhenn has us watching passively as we "hold our homes like credit cards" and let events play out between our political parties.  The refrain of, "I'd give it all for a legacy of love," which repeats on album-closer "Greatest Revenge," indicates that some biblical lessons may be at play in informing Burhenn's philosophy.  The title track is a rollicking, rock/soul, "We're Not Gonna Take It" for 2012 that I'm sure caused me to up my pace just a little as I ran.  "Radiator Sister" comes across as 1980's pop, complete with "ooh-ooh's," polluting corporations, and people "dying in the breadlines."  The electro-pop "Disarm" takes the Springsteen angle of using a relationship as a metaphor for bigger issues.  The album closes with the 1960's girl-group sounds of "Greatest Revenge," on which Burhenn sings "Love me won't you love me like it's our greatest revenge."

I hope I haven't made this album sound preachy, because it doesn't really come across that way.  Thematically, it centers around a pretty common idea in pop music:  that we should love each other.  In this case, Burhenn suggests that simple idea as a necessary condition for starting to fix the problems we all face.  Generals gets that message across through a strong collection of songs, peppered with some hard-hitting lyrics, that are deeply rooted in the sounds of American popular music.

Whatever your own political philosophy, there's plenty on Generals to make you think and to make you move your feet.

Athletics, Who You Are Is Not Enough, 2012

Busy Sunday When I Didn't Run Bandcamp Discovery Album Review

Busy, busy weekend.  Friday night saw CoolMom and me heading into NYC for WoodyFest.  Then I was up at 5 on Saturday to take CoolDaughter #1 to the first day of her two-day swim meet at Princeton University.  Saturday night:  roller derby in Asbury Park.  Sunday morning:  more meet, during which I had the heartbreaking experience of consoling CD #1 after she missed her first chance to go to the NJ Junior Olympics by 0.7 seconds.  I think I also assembled some knock-down patio furniture in there somewhere.

All of this is meant as an excuse for my not going for a run at all this weekend.  Add to that that I really didn't know what to review -- I mean, really, am I going to add anything to the conversation around Dirty Projectors or Frank Ocean? -- and I was in a bind.  Then I had an idea that I think could grow into a semi-regular feature here.  You can do this, too.

I went over to Bandcamp and clicked on the "New Jersey" tag.  The first album (I think I sorted on "popularity") listed was Who You Are Is Not Enough by Athletics.  The tag list for the album reads: "alternative rock alternative ambient indie post-rock rock Asbury Park."  Sold!

Athletics are a five-piece band based, you guessed it, in Asbury Park.  Who You Are Is Not Enough consists of five songs, titled with Roman numerals I-V, spanning about thirty minutes.  The five tracks chronicle the experience of losing a loved one to illness and, likely, correspond to the five stages of grief.  Lead singer Garrett Yaeger takes listeners through each of those stages, noting hopefully on "I" that, "You're breathing softly, but so much stronger on your own," blaming himself on "II," wishing he had more to give on "III," hitting bottom on "IV," and finally admitting, "I would have died for you," on "V."

Thematically and musically, Who You Are Is Not Enough had me thinking of The Antlers' Hospice -- Hospice if it were, maybe, performed by Meadowlands-era Wrens.  The first four tracks contain lots of swirling, cresting, dream poppy guitars.  "V," the "Acceptance" track, is quieter, mostly piano and vocals.  John Cannon's drum work holds everything together nicely.

Who You Are Is Not Enough isn't what I would go to first to pick myself up out of the doldrums, but it features some excellent musicianship.  CoolMom just left for a business trip, and I think this album will go nicely with my just-put-the-kids-to-bed-and-the-house-is-quiet glass of whiskey.

This was fun.  I think I'll do it again soon.  You can still come here to get my take on all the music that Pitchfork, Stereogum, and BrooklynVegan are saying is worth hearing, but I'm going to make more of an effort to branch out and give some of these hard-working, local bands a listen.

You can check out Who You Are Is Not Enough for free and then "name your price" to download it from Bandcamp.

Crocodiles, Endless Flowers, 2012

Sunday Run Album Review

As a kid, up until maybe 1986 when R.E.M.’s Life’s Rich Pageant came out, I was what we’d call today a classic rock guy.  I listened to WPLJ, WNEW, and WAPP while they were all “album-oriented rock” stations.  Today, I tell myself that I was always a little bit left-of-center even for someone who liked classic rock.  My preferences tended more toward The Who and The Kinks than, say, Led Zeppelin or The Rolling Stones.  I eventually moved on to The Police, Elvis Costello, and The Clash before getting fully into "alternative" music and the then wonderful WHTG.  At any rate, I never spent much time listening to The Cure or The Jesus and Mary Chain until I was older.

Maybe it’s because I feel like I missed out a bit as a teenager, but I’ve been eating up the revival of shoegaze, a genre that grew out of the sound of The Cure, The Cocteau Twins, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and My Bloody Valentine.  In just the last two or three years, bands like The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Yuck, and DIIV have carried the torch for 80’s and early-90’s fuzz.  Sand Diego’s Crocodiles are the latest neo-shoegaze band to pop onto my radar.

Though I’ve resolved lately to back off on the running in favor of cycling, in the name of cross-training and maintaining this feature, I took to the pavement on foot today with Crocodiles’ latest, Endless Flowers.

Endless Flowers is the third album from Crocodiles.  The title track, which opens the album, justifies many of the Jesus and Mary Chain comparisons that feature in almost every review I’ve seen of the record.  Rather than imitating The Jesus and Mary Chain, though, I think Crocodiles are just exploring some of the same territory as their predecessors.  Songs like “No Black Clouds for Dee Dee” (a song singer/guitarist Brandon Welchez composed for his wife, Dee Dee of Dum Dum Girls), “Electric Death Song” and “Bubblegum Trash” have the post-punk sound, but also have roots in 1960’s pop like Tommy James and the Shondells or The Hollies.  The album also contains some straightforward garage rock like “My Surfing Lucifer,” “Welcome Trouble,” and, on the Amazon version anyway, “I’m Not a Young Man Anymore.”

In other words, much of Endless Flowers comes close to post-punk shoegaze pop, while the rest of it sounds like pre-punk, noisy rock and roll.  That may sound like Crocodiles have put out a record that doesn’t really know what it wants to be.  I think, though, it makes for an interesting entry in this revivalist genre, showcasing what Crocodiles can do with the same influences that inspired many of the bands that came before them.

Endless Flowers is a slightly uneven, but enjoyable blast of fuzz that can satisfy your mid-80's cravings, while it plays with some of the enduring, even “classic,” music that's been around much longer.

DIIV, Oshin, 2012

Monday Vacation Day Bike to the Beach and Hang Around Album Review

For my day job, I work for a company that's headquartered in a country where people actually get time off every year.  As a result of this, I have more vacation time than CoolMom.  I took some of that extra time for this holiday week, and, so far, it's been a great solo staycation.  CoolDaughters 1 & 2 go to camp every day and don't get home until close to five o'clock, so I'm as on my own as I've been in a long time for much of the day.

It's made me a little lax on the blogging.  I resolved, therefore, this evening to sit down and finally put down some thoughts on the debut album from Brooklyn-based DIIV, Oshin.

A big part of being plugged into the mindiesphere as a cooldad is an aversion to hype.  A good deal of it preceded the release of Oshin.  In advance of the album's release, Pitchfork premiered the tracks "How Long Have You Known?" and "Doused," bestowing Best New Track tags on both.  The band went through a name change, from Dive to DIIV.  And much has been made of frontman Zachary Cole Smith's association with Beach Fossils.  All of this should have made me very suspicious of the DIIV project.  I even read several reviews that seemed to knock the band as much for being another mindie darling from Brooklyn as for anything having to do with the music.

Well, today I sat down and listened to the album.  Oshin, simply, is a collection of sounds that I love.  Layered guitars, vocals that are difficult to pick out from the rest of the mix, and lots of reverb.  Instrumental album opener "(Druun)" lets you know right away what to expect from the album:  guitar sounds favoring notes over chords and then a bit of a hook, all drenched in reverb.  "Past Lives," "How Long Have You Known?" "Follow," and beautiful album closer "Home" are reminiscent of Real Estate.  There is a bit more darkness or shoegaziness to the sound, though.  "Doused" is the album standout, and the guitars ride on top of the rhythm section like Interpol, circa 2002, though without the sometimes ridiculous Interpol lyrics.

The band mentioned the importance of their lyrics via a tweet last week, so I held the lyric sheet and followed along as I listened this evening.  None of the songs on Oshin has very many lyrics, but the album isn't all just about the wall of sound.  The record opens with Smith singing, "I was your home..." and ends with "You'll never have a home until you go home."  What goes on in between isn't always easy to decipher, but I get the sense that it deals with the simple story of people growing apart.  I've said before that I don't like to delve too deeply into lyrical content in these reviews, but I will say that there is a definite thematic unity to Oshin that will reward people who pay attention to more than just the sound.

Just sitting back, listening, and letting Oshin carry you on that sound, though, is pretty cool, too.  I plan on doing just that as I spend another morning relaxing on the beach tomorrow.

Oh, and it's good to be suspicious of hype.  Just know that some bands really deserve it. 

Tanlines, Mixed Emotions, 2012

Sunday Run Album Review

We like to think that the world of music has been democratized by things like Apple's GarageBand and the Internet.  Even my guitar teacher and I were discussing the other day, in the context of my maybe trying to make some of my own music, how easy creating and recording music is nowadays.  You don't even need to know a drummer or a bass player to bring your compositions to life.  You can post the fruits of your labor onto sites like YouTube, Bandcamp, or SoundCloud and start building a fanbase.

There have been success stories that followed that formula.  Justin Bieber comes to mind.  But even his ultimate rise to stardom came with the backing of a major label.  When I hear albums like Tanlines' Mixed Emotions, I begin to understand the stranglehold that the major media companies and their radio station partners have on what becomes popular music.  As I ran along the Long Branch Promenade yesterday listening to Mixed Emotions, and as CoolMom and I later bopped around during our dinner preparation like Kramer and Newman cranking out homemade sausage, I wondered why all those people looking for danceable pop music have to listen to LMFAO instead of Tanlines.

Tanlines are percussionist Jesse Cohen and guitarist / vocalist Eric Emm.  Mixed Emotions has been out since March.  I stupidly kind of avoided it, thinking it would be too much dance-oriented, synth pop for my taste.  This, despite the fact that the album opens with two of my favorite tracks of the year.  "Brothers" has a driving 80's beat with Emm singing, "I'm just the same as I ever been / But I'm the only one who doesn't notice it."  The keyboard riff, the build-up to, and the payoff of the chorus on "All of Me" make that song as catchy to me as any this summer.  "Yes Way," "Real Life," and "Cactus" pair African beats with the synths to achieve an even more danceable version of Vampire Weekend-like pop.  "Nonesuch" closes the album, sounding almost like a lost Roxy Music cut.  Overall, I wouldn't quite call Mixed Emotions an 80's revivalist album.  But the synths, Emm's vocals, and the sadness in some of the lyrics all do combine to give the record a distinctly 80's feel.

I don't automatically dislike everything that achieves mega-popularity.  I just wish some of it were better.  Even The Song of the Summer of 2012, Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe," which isn't bad, could use another verse or something to make it sound less repetitive toward the end.  If the world were set up so that a band like Tanlines could really get their music to the mega-masses, I'm sure we'd be seeing tribute / parody / mashup videos for "All of Me" all over YouTube.  And I like to think I'd still enjoy Mixed Emotions just as much as I do now.

River City Extension, Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Your Anger, 2012

Sunday Piscataway Run Album Review

Did you ever notice that when an act is from New Jersey, that fact becomes a huge part of their identity?  I could just be missing something, but it feels like it's less common to hear bands from other parts of the country referred to as XYZ Place's Such-and-Such.  California and Brooklyn, sure.  Maybe Athens, Georgia.  New Jersey, though, seems to impart its own terroir to music produced by artists as diverse as Bon Jovi and Count Basie, The Feelies and Dionne Warwick, Screaming Females and Whitney Houston, The Wrens and The Four Seasons.  Maybe it's some combination of so many people living on top of one another, in the shadows of two of America's largest cities, with the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean on the doorstep, that results in some of our favorite music.

I thought about this yesterday while making my "run" for the second straight day between CoolDaughter #1's swim meet in Piscataway, NJ and home.  I turned River City Extension's Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Your Anger way up in the car and immediately felt a connection with this Ocean County eight-piece.

If last week was "Heaven" week, then this week was "Mid-Atlantic Americana" week (It could also have been "Canadian guitar-drum duo" week, but that's a review for another day).  River City Extension are a very different animal, though, from the subject of Thursday's review, Heyward Howkins.  While singer/songwriter/guitarist Joe Michelini produces his share of intimate acoustic numbers, the album really comes to life when the band is pumping at full force.

"If You Need Me Back In Brooklyn" starts like one of those intimate, singer-songwriter tracks and builds to an Arcade Fire-esque finale.  "Welcome To Pittsburgh" is a great pop tune featuring one of my favorite lyrics* on the record: "But I learned every line I need to know / To help a person change and grow / I don't rehearse them for people like you though."  On "There and Back Again," Michelini starts off by saying, "I live by the ocean, but I don't feel free," and sums up that whole New Jersey feeling I was talking about earlier.

Michelini has written some deeply personal songs about substance abuse, freedom or the lack of it, and personal change that are enhanced by the drums, banjos, handclaps and group vocals you'd expect in rootsy Americana.  But there are also plenty of production flourishes that give the songs a modern sound.  I can see Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Your Anger becoming a longtime favorite of mine like two albums that I found myself thinking about the whole time I listened:  Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and The Monitor by Titus Andronicus (that would be New Jersey's Titus Andronicus).

In this part of New Jersey, we've got the beach.  We've got Springsteen.  It's hard sometimes, though, not to gaze across the river or out into the ocean and think that you've got to be destined for bigger things.  The dreams of those bigger things and, maybe, the feelings you get when they don't quite come true can really produce some great music.

People in my neck of the woods can check out River City Extension on August 17th as part of WBJB's Songwriters in the Park series.



*A quick word about lyrics:  I don't comment much on lyrical content in these reviews for a few reasons.
1.  Most of the time these are first listens, and I don't really have time to dive too deep.
2.  I feel like trying to interpret someone else's lyrics is a good way to make myself look like an idiot.
3.  Initially anyway, I experience songs as a whole package, and dissecting the lyrical content might take something away from that for me.

Japandroids, Celebration Rock, 2012

Sunday Run Album Review

At the end of last year, I saw this New York Times article snarkily lamenting the almost-death of major-label rock music.  Just as I was starting to become indignant at the focus on major-label, Wal-Mart rock (Foster the People, Nickelback), I came across this sentence:  “The fringes remain interesting, and regenerate constantly, but the center has been left to rot.”  So Jon Caramanica had heard The Hold Steady, Fucked Up, Wild Flag, and probably Japandroids.

I’ve been listening to Japandroids’ Celebration Rock almost exclusively since it started streaming at NPR’s website, and I bought the album on the day of its release last week.  Just to be sure I didn’t miss anything, I listened to it during my run yesterday along the Promenade in Long Branch.  As an aside, Best Coast can say what they like about California being “The Only Place,” but this Brooklyn-born, New Jersey-raised guy will take a sunny day on a New Jersey boardwalk any day of the week.

Japandroids are Brian King (guitar, vocals) and David Prowse (drums, vocals) and hail from Vancouver, BC.  In 2009 they released Post-Nothing, intended as the swan song for a band that they felt was going nowhere.  That album, a collection of pop-punk, almost emo anthems, received wide acclaim and extended the life of Japandroids.  For Celebration Rock, Japandroids have turned their focus a little bit away from themselves, and the result is a magnificent rock and roll record.

Heaven has been a theme around here for the last week or so.  The subject of last week’s review, The Walkmen’s Heaven, comes from the point of view of a veteran band who have been making albums for over a decade and whose members now have families and children.  Celebration Rock concerns itself with heaven as well.  Only this time, we get the perspective of a young duo, at the beginning of their career, who sing lyrics like, “Busting my guts on a riot dose of paradise.”

The album opens with the sound of fireworks.  From there, “The Nights of Wine and Roses” opens with the question, “Don’t we have anything to live for?”  The answer:  “Well of course we do, but until they come true / We’re drinking!”  It pretty much goes on from there.  On both “Fire’s Highway” and “Evil’s Sway” with its Petty-esque “Oh yeah! Alright!” you get the feeling of being part of the audience shouting back at the band.   The cover of The Gun Club’s “For the Love of Ivy” doesn’t work as well as the band’s own songs, but the album’s second half, featuring soon-to-be classics “Younger Us” and “The House that Heaven Built,” is as good as any stretch I’ve heard on an album this year.   At the end of album-closer “Continuous Thunder,” we get those fireworks again.

The influences of bands like The Replacements, The Hold Steady, and even Bruce Springsteen are obvious, even though the songwriting has a way to go lyrically before it measures up to Westerberg or Finn.  For some, the one-note sound of power chords and drums could get tiresome, but Japandroids have kept Celebration Rock to a manageable thirty-five minutes.  For me, a recovering rockist, the emotion and how real it feels is enough to carry Celebration Rock and to make it feel, well, celebratory.

Head over to Polyvinyl Records for a full album stream, and see what you think.