New Music (10.22.2015)

Another double feature this week. Musical acts have been packing it in here in October. I would say it's the award season rush, but these aren't movies, and the Grammy's are pointless and generally inaccurate anyway. Needless to say, two heavy-hitters came out with albums this past week that weren't available for streaming ahead of time so here they are now...

Beach House
Thank Your Lucky Stars

Since their debut in 2006, Beach House has been the model of consistency, releasing an album every two years like clockwork. And not just any albums; 2010's Teen Dream, and 2012's Bloom were so gorgeous a million copycats sprung up in their wake. That's what makes Thank Your Lucky Stars so surprising: two in the same year? Inconceivable!

The only problem with a virtuoso act releasing two albums so close together is that we barely had any time to unpack Depression Cherry. Beach House albums are filled to the brim with sound, as if the duo is grabbing everything it can before there's no sounds left in the store. Such immense layering requires multiple listens, often with plenty of thinking and alone time in between. Two gut punches to the feels just a few months apart may end up hurting more than expected.

But it's not like Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand just rushed through an extra record for the sales, shock value, or just to say they did. Thank Your Lucky Stars is still as well-formed and jaw-droppingly well written as ever. It's frustratingly evident that their talent knows no bounds, and that the spring of their signature sound will never run dry.

One of the hidden, extraordinary talents of Beach House has always been Alex Scally's painfully expressive guitar work. Each plucked string sounds like a new widow screaming into an endless and unforgiving sky. Each note is one teardrop away from overflowing the glass of emotion built by the incredible craftsmanship. Each solo is Scally laying bare his final offering before the Wailing Wall, broken and unable to go on even a moment longer without this last supplication being answered.

And once again, of course, the album ends beautifully. How could it not? This is Beach House after all, a band so amazingly consistent in their ability to exit on the crest of the wave it's almost sickening. On "Somewhere Tonight," Victoria Legrand's vocals soar to new heights, strong enough to fill even the furthest space in a cathedral, yet gentle enough to make it feel like your living room.

Certainly, the case for these nine songs being separate from Depression Cherry is well made; it's more immediate, and lacking the gauzy reverb we've become so accustomed to, but don't assume Beach House have changed their overall aesthetic. They're just as woozy and dream-like as ever, it's just that the dreams are getting a little...darker.

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Deerhunter
Fading Frontier

Deerhunter is something of a conundrum these days. To say anything they do can reach the lofty heights of Halcyon Digest--a perfect album--is an outright lie. But fear not, Bradford Cox still has the songwriting chops to drag his band along with him to the gates of Valhalla.

And that is also the main problem with Deerhunter now. Since Cox has taken over the main duties, everything they do is just a slightly better produced Atlas Sound album. The songs, while still good on their own, don't have the ethereal quality of those on Microcastle and Weird Era Cont., or the impact of literally every note on Digest. Monomania was just a metal version of his solo work.

Yes, Lockett Pundt does some writing, and his only credit here, the psych-synth ballad "Ad Astra," is a major highlight of the album; but it is Cox who truly carries the weight of most song creation, and the change in sound is so jarringly obvious, it makes the album have an emotionally distant feel. If Beach House up there is always trying to make you cry, the first six songs of Fading Frontier is trying to flatline as much as possible.

But then there's the last three songs. "Snakeskin" may very well be the best song of 2015, and it brings all the classic amazement that we've come to expect of Deerhunter: spacey Bradford Cox lyrics delivered in speech-singing, intensely layered guitars, mind-blowing bass, and percussion parts so intricate and obscure music theorists wet themselves.

The previously mentioned "Ad Astra" is as hauntingly beautiful as it is sonically diverse and fulfilling, with the first recorded used of a drum machine by the band and a gently heartwarming vocal delivery from Pundt. And the closer, "Carrion," which Cox consistently pronounces as "carry on" (a play on words, or just strange delivery, with Deerhunter you can never tell), matches Digest closer, "He Would Have Laughed" for its weight and urgency.

Overall, Fading Frontier is a technically proficient album that is enjoyable in the sense that reading a master chef's recipe is delicious. For much of it's length, Deerhunter (particularly Cox) seem to go out of their way to prove something they don't have to--mainly, that they can write songs at an advanced level. When the Tin Man finally gets his heart, however, the remaining songs are so fantastic, the slog to get there feels rewarding. An accidental marathon.

New Music (10.15.2015)

Neon Indian
VEGA INTL. Night School

In the four long years since Alan Palomo released Era Extraña, he was apparently trapped in a Caribbean resort hotel bar...and not an expensive one--constantly being made to listen to worst that post-disco 80's tropicalia had to offer.

The influences of the "punk is dead" movement headlined by Prince, Blondie, and the Police, are so overtly present that Palomo might as well be beating you in the face with a neon strobe light--a fact only made more patently obvious by the Refn-esque cover photo, complete with faux-Japanese-import sidelight.

But don't worry, the overabundance of quasi-reggae influence by no means clouds the fact that this is most definitely a Neon Indian production. Night School is full of that signature gauzy, lo-fi sound Palomo pioneered on Psychic Chasms all those years ago (six...it was six years ago), as well as plenty of delicious bass grooves to keep your Debbie Harry-themed nightclub idea stocked for several spins.

As has become a niche for Palomo, it is the little semi-songs between larger moments that are used to great effect here. Intro "Hit Parade" expertly samples New Order and really sets the tone for the next 50 minutes, while "Slumlord Re-lease" almost tops its parent, and the fantastic "Bozo" is a schizophrenic mess with a beat to die for.

And while Palomo has been shelling out "Annie" to any late night show that will listen (it is the best example of the new sound), the real masterpiece here is the single "Slumlord," with its Vangelis-via-John Carpenter intro that slowly, but delightfully, builds into a chiptune fresco painted by a chillwave Rembrandt. The song is so good, it's chorus of "it goes on and / on and..." is practically begging you to make it do the same.

So, if you've been looking for a party album that makes all the attendees think they have cotton in their ears, Neon Indian has got something for you--an italo-disco soundtrack for that one great 80's detective movie. You know the one I mean.

New Music (10.08.2015)

Protomartyr
The Agent Intellect

There is a story of a man who once saw something no one else could. Whether it was because they didn't or couldn't or wouldn't, no one saw what he saw, and it was a thing so beautiful that he fell to his knees and cried. Such is The Agent Intellect.

In songs like "Pontiac '87" and "Clandestine Time," Protomartyr describe, through nihilistic scenes of both past and future, the hopelessness of the post-recession rust belt, as well as the tragedy of living. But instead of treating hope as forbidden, it becomes the contraband chisel you will use to tunnel out of your self-made prison. This mood pervades The Agent Intellect, Protomartyr's third album, which only serves to further expand the group's palette of sound and create even greater sonic pleasures than their already storied sophomore effort, Under Color of Official Right.

Part Joy Division and part Radio Dept., Agent Intellect is both the album we need AND the one we deserve. The songwriting is complex and brilliant, debuting the band's first suite-like song, the lead single "Why Does It Shake?," which serves as a demonstration of both their significant braintrust and their ineluctable brawn.

There are insanely fantastic moments on the album: the transition from "Cowards Starve" to "I Forgive You" sounds like so much fun, you'll forget singer Joe Casey is trying to teach you a lesson; the extreme punk of "The Hermit" is so overwhelmingly jumpy that a mosh-pit forms in your brain; the gorgeous production of shoegaze ballad "Ellen" is so mesmerizingly resplendent you will lose yourself in time.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, compares to the talent on display here. Protomartyr on Agent Intellect are so above an beyond any of their peers it almost leads to jealousy. "False Happiness is on the rise / See the victims piled high," Casey sings, almost as an accusation pointed at the modern world. It is a theme that runs through the entire work, but it is one we must accept if we ever hope for catharsis. The Agent Intellect is so beautifully heartrending, the sadness transforms into transcendence--the apotheosis of a child's ghost.

Detroit may be the great American tragedy--a once proud, gleaming city on a hill now disheveled and mostly abandoned, made the object of condescending documentaries--but long held suffering leads to the best art. As the empty coal towns of Ohio and western Pennsylvania spawned Ministry and Nine Inch Nails, and birthed the industrial scene, so shall the desolate car factories and steel mills of Flint and Pontiac birth a new renaissance...with Protomartyr their Da Vinci.

New Music (10.06.2015)

Deafheaven
New Bermuda

Departing from a schedule is pretty hard for yours truly to do, but when something as intensely epic as a new Deafheaven album appears, it's just that easy.

Deafheaven are clearly the best metal act currently racking up critical acclaim points, and with good reason. New Bermuda is an artistic masterpiece on par with their previous release, Sunbather, except here the beats hit faster, the guitars crash louder, and the weighty lyrics are as psychologically damaging as ever.

With great success comes great responsibility, a burden so frequently shouldered poorly by "groundbreaking" acts of past years: Sleigh Bells, Purity Ring, and Twin Shadow all come to mind; those bands and performers who implode under the pressure of staying on top. It's like Harvey Dent says, "you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain." Such is the tragedy of the industry.

This is where Deafheaven consistently triumphs however, in the face of ever-mounting demands, their foundation of art and music first, and eschewing the checking of boxes for innocuous, inconsequential genre labels, has built them a sound they can easily reinforce and a market they easily corner: black metal even your mom can listen to.

By no means does that make Deafheaven, or New Bermuda "soft." Quite the opposite in fact. Where the lush guitar arrangements might have you thinking shoegaze-dream-pop, the constant, unyeilding drums and intense production are screaming doom metal. While frontman George Clarke's lyrics might have you thinking Camus-esque existentialism, the obviously harsh delivery will drive home the crushing despair that is a world without hope.

It is a rare thing to find a metal album, speed-, black-, sludge-, doom-, or otherwise, that one would describe as "gorgeous," but Deafheaven creates such an environment consistently and with the utmost care and precision. It's hard to stay on the top of the mountain, especially with as fickle a fan base as heavy metal brings to bear, but New Bermuda is the kind of disparate-audience-spanning, new-genre-defining frontispiece that even the most pugnacious of metalheads cannot deny.

New Music (10.01.2015)

Eagles of Death Metal
Zipper Down

After seven years of near-silence, the silliest duo in rock are back with what might be their best work. Despite the ridiculous innuendo, simplistic songwriting, and...just...they're just ridiculous, Zipper Down proves that Eagles of Death Metal can still rock, hard.

The album kicks off with the best single EoDM has released since "I Only Want You." "Complexity," apart from being brilliantly written and perfectly produced (something the duo has had issues with in the past), it also serves as a manifesto for the pair's music and lifestyle. As co-founder Jesse Hughes said in a recent interview, Eagles of Death Metal are just fans of rock & roll, and are really just joining a party.

But no matter how much they downplay their talent and play-up their seat-of-the-pants vibe, Zipper Down proves Jesse Hughes and Josh Homme are world-class songsmiths, and clearly the life of the party. No rock album this year--and probably several years in either direction--is this much fun. From the silliness of anti-hipster anthem "Silverlake (K.S.O.F.M)," to the brilliantly produced sultriness of "Oh Girl," to the greatest cover the duo has attempted, this album is dance-the-night-away material.

Speaking of that cover, one of Duran Duran's "Save a Prayer," it is not only an odd choice compared to the ZZTop and Stealers Wheel that would seem normal, but it is absolutely fantastic. In what is by a wide margin the album high point, EoDM's version of "Save a Prayer" highlights all the band's best strengths: Jesse Hughes crooning and swoon-worthy guitar, and Josh Homme's unbelievably great production talent, which has to this point been almost unheard anywhere outside of his own projects. This song cannot be recommended enough; it outdoes the original 100-fold and showcases Eagles of Death Metal at their very best--hopelessly romantic.

We can only hope this is the first in a new resurgence of Homme quality output. The seemingly infinite break between Queens of the Stone Age albums and even longer one between Eagles of Death Metal albums was nigh-unbearable. And if Zipper Down is any indication, the resurrection will be the most awesome party in human history.