Austin Town Hall

Rating:

When the Jaguar Love project first came to fruition, it was initially 2 parts Blood Brothers and 1 part Pretty Girls Make Graves.  They released an incredible single with “Highways of Gold.”  That was then.  Now the band is 2 parts Blood Brothers and no parts PGMG; will this affect the sound of Hologram Jams?  The answer is yes, and you’ll be surprised how much.

Take Me to the Sea, the group’s first album was fueled with the energy you would expect from Blood Brothers, but this new band doesn’t even really resemble anything of that, other than that you can always recognize Johnny Whitney’s vocals.  That’s about the only thing remaining that you will find on Hologram Jams.

Unfortunately, the missing percussionist Jay Clark really leaves a huge gaping whole in the music.  Instead of turning to another drummer, the remaining duo went straight to a drum machine.  The Nylon Tour in 09′ featured the group as such, but many hoped that this was just a temporary solution.  Without Clark, the beats seem really uninspired, and the guitars of Cody Votalato don’t really add an extra dimension.  If you take “Cherry Soda,” it just sounds like programmed beats with auto-tune. 

After all the promise of the early recordings of this band, Hologram Jams is an enormous let down.  Lyrically, it just seems extremely cheesy. Here’s a sample from “Up All Night” : “We stayed up all night, and saw the sun come up.”  This is disheartening, as the lyrics just come across as if they were written by a teenager in the midst of his first experience with partying. 

While your nostalgic tendencies want to recall the glory dates of Blood Brothers, this album seems to damage everything that they established.  People remarked that this was a New Order meets Black Flag, but instead it comes across like a hardcore Kesha album, only cheesier. 

Perhaps the criticism is extremely unfair, and I’m being overly harsh.  I thought about that sincerely, especially after I praised this band all during the summer of 08, but I feel like I owe every person who read that stuff an apology.  This is possibly one of the least enjoyable listening experiences of my life.  I can back this up with four simple comments: 1) These sound like the beats already programmed into any keyboard you buy at Wal-Mart 2) The guitar doesn’t even seem to serve a purpose on this record 3) Lyrics are pre-pubescent 4) I just deleted this from my iTunes.

Sorry guys, but while I love early Jaguar Love moments, Hologram Jams is the least listenable thing I’ve come across in a lifetime.

You know if you’ve been following our site that we loved the Blood Brothers, then moved on to loving Jaguar Love. Now we’ve got another family relative of Blood Brothers, this time from former lead singer Jordan.  His new group Past Lives isn’t quite in the same world as his former band, though their first single “Hex Takes Hold” did have some of the vocal memories.  This new one, however, slowly trods along, almost as if they are playing with some slo-core stylings.  You be the judge. And if you like it, grab Tapestry of Webs on February 23rd.

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Download: Past Lives – Deep In The Valley [MP3]

Oh man.  We really like you Jaguar Love.  We really do. But what is this new direction you’re going in?  I guess we should have seen it coming when drummer J. Clark left the band and Johnny and Cody continued on as a two piece.  This new song is sort of a techno sounding number with way too much production work and the same lyric chanted over and over.  Let’s hope that more new material is on the way with more of that old punch and energy.  Maybe it’s not sooo bad, but it really makes me want to try out as drummer for the band.  This track will appear on a new album from Jaguar Love out sometime in 2010 via Fat Possom.

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Download: Jaguar Love – Up All Night [MP3]

We were excited to be hitting up the Nylon Summer Tour at Antones, as the bill featured the likes of Jaguar Love, Plasticines and Patrick Wolf. These are several bands we had been following for a long time, but had yet to get a chance to see on our home-turf.  Anxiously, we grabbed a few Lone Stars and awaited the evening with enthusiastic uncertainty. Follow the jump to read our take on the show.

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It’s finally July and what better way to celebrate summer with a mini-festival being put on by Nylon Magazine at Antone’s on Wednesday night.  We call it a mini-festival because the lineup for the late afternoon/nighttime show features 4 incredible acts that should tickle your fancy.  The lineup includes showman Patrick Wolf headlining, Living Things, Plastiscines, and long time ATH fave Jaguar Love.  Tickets for this big show are only $15 so we suggest you make plans to be there for this extremely cheap show.  Doors are at 6pm and first act starts at 7pm.  If you don’t like the idea of being at Antone’s for so long, get there early, get stamped, and come and go as you please.

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Download: Patrick Wolf – Hard Times [MP3]

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Download: Jaguar Love – Highways of Gold [MP3]

So when we thought making an albums of the year post was hard, this one proved to be even harder.  How do you take literally thousands of songs and narrow it down to the best 40 of the year?  Not too sure how to answer that question, but we tried.  Each of these songs scream 2008 in our ears.  As evident by this list, the year in music was quite a good one and we had some tough choices to make.  We’ve got some of the songs streaming for you or links to the song on youtube.  Follow the jump to see if your favorite tune of the year made the list.

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As much as I enjoy spitting hateful bile, Jaugar Love is one of those bands I really enjoy.  You can check out just how much I love them by reading an old review. Well, they will be destroying the insides of Emo’s Lounge this Saturday night along with Polysics, who bring along some New Wave elements.

The energy infused show opens doors at 9 PM.  Tickets available.

Rating:

When I first head about the union of former Pretty Girls Make Graves member, Jay Clark, with two of the Blood Brothers, I was salivating in wake for the release of a full length.  The potential for this combination could reach no bounds in my imagination, but come to find out, there are some boundaries for this band.

The opening track, “Highways of Gold,” fails to let me down.  Each time I play this song I’m invigorated by the rise and fall of the guitar work, as it approaches the angular tour de force that I anticipated. Had they reined it in about thirty seconds, then this could be a front runner for one of my favorites of the year.

I suppose that at this point, I should let you know that singer Johnny Whitney’s voice can be grating.  Personally, I’ve adapted to it after settling in to several Blood Brothers’ albums, but I can foresee this as a problem for many listeners.  If you can’t look past it in the first song, then you can’t get through this album.

Still, the next three songs are solid tracks.  In particular, “Georgia” won me over with its proximity to a modern indie ballad done in the post-punk way.  Lyrically, these songs set the face, from the doomsday homages in “Jaguar Pirates” to the personal pain that comes with “Georgia,” which still kind of deals with the effects of living in the modern world.

However, the album starts to get repetitive at this point.  The musicianship is exactly what you expect, with tight drumming and throbbing bass, piled upon razor-sharp guitars, but at this point it kind of blends into itself.  There isn’t any differentiation in the vocals, and the music, like a Blood Brothers album, or the later Pretty Girls Make Graves records for that fact.  It’s not that the music is uninteresting, but the pace and power disappear.

Then comes the eighth track on the record, “Bone Trees and a Broken Heart,” which is another slow song for the group.  Strangely, their slower songs are just as intriguing to my ears as their louder material.  For me, it represents the talent this group possesses, not to mention their abilities to go pretty much anywhere on this record.  It’s just too bad that they don’t really go anywhere, aside from the expected barrage of noise I predicted in my earlier fantasies of this band.

Once you get away from Whitney’s vocals, you’ll find–those of you that like to rock–that this record has a lot of redeemable qualities about it.  It’s listenable all the way through, at least for those of this ilk. It might not be anything that takes you out of this world, but then again, it meets almost all of my expectations.  Good start fellas, now hit the showers.