Category: Reviews

Parkay Quarts – Content Nausea

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WYR0714CDinsertRating: ★★★½☆

If it wasn’t obvious, Parkay Quarts is the slightly twisted version of Parquet Courts, the contrarily art-punk band that put out Sunbathing Animal earlier this year and has been bringing their flair to the genre for the past few years. With this altered moniker, two of the members of this band are on their second venture for this year in Content Nausea which ventures further down the trail and upon a bit of a pedestal.

The opening track of this record is “Everyday it Starts,” and it has the band beginning with their adventure into the land of pathos. From the beginning, the band’s central focus seems to be a balance between eclectic instrumentation and the rambling lyrics that ascribes what it means to be living in the present day. The instrumentation on this number is steady—the drums patter in the background while the guitars and bass both alternate to create a rhythm akin to a clock ticking. While this goes on and is interrupted by random electronic sounds, the vocals chime in, deadpan, telling you “every day it starts: anxiety.” The song is a mimetic of the anxiety itself, with us embodying the soloing electric guitar meandering through the ticking waves of anxiety. Second number, title track, changes the pacing from constant to constantly shifting as the deadpan vocals ramble in a sort shot at spoken word set to the intentionally out of control instrumentation.

But it’s not all philosophical ramblings that should pull you into Content Nausea. I’ve found myself intrigued with some of the later tracks on a purely base level; there are some straight up jams on this record that are worth your time. Take “Pretty Machines” as an example—the song has this killer guitar riff that weaves its way in and out of the tune, and the song itself builds to its end with what sounds like lo-fi horns to end the number. This song, of course, doesn’t stray far from those relevant lyrics from before: “These days it’s harder to feel, it’s harder to suffer.” There’s also a lovely cover of “These Boots,” which makes it apparent as to the attractiveness of Parkay Quarts sound on this record. This track meshes perfectly with the campy, pulled together style of the band.

Content Nausea is certainly something different than you usually run into in the sphere of the music world, but it seems an apt statement piece in which form compliments content, which is reflective of the world we’re living in. While it gets a little preachy at points, have a listen and see if it aligns with where you’re at.

 

Flesh Lights – Free Yourself

10658972_727475723954210_6969944611352798152_oRating: ★★★★½

Modern punk rock seems to have gotten a bit stale, in my opinion.  You get tons of reverb on the vocals, you get guitar riffs galore, but you never get a band that embodies everything, until you listen to the new Flesh Lights record.  Listeners will find songs that are brash in parts, or tracks filled with arena rock riffs, but most impressive is that Free Yourself shows true musicianship.

You couldn’t ask for a better opening track than “Just About Due.”  It’s a power pop gem filled with this huge guitar stomp that really emphasizes the band’s skills with their respective instruments.  Every riff begs you to pump your fist, and I’m in love with the solo that breaks through briefly near the end, not to mention the growl of the vocal.  Such a tune would fit perfectly alongside “I Wait,” if we were to look at modern album structures, but the band holds off on offering that hit until later in Free Yourself.  The lead guitar works its way through a great mini-solo, but the chorus is best appreciated by people screaming at the top of their lungs with their best set of buds.

Still, this isn’t a power-pop record; it’s a record of great rock songs.  Flesh Lights kick you in the teeth with tracks like “Middle Age” and “We Go Off.”  The former takes a knock at middle-aged wannabes and hangers-on, all the while rocking things with a swagger all their own.  Can’t believe these guys are calling me out!  “We Go Off” is perhaps one of the record’s most dangerous moments, knifing it’s way through your speakers with these jagged guitar riffs and a ferocious vocal that nears going off the tracks.  There’s a stuttering approach that sort of reminds me of the stylings you’d find on an ALL album; just listen through this track to hear the band’s talent.

One of my favorite tracks, “Time Thief” seemingly comes off like an outlier, jamming out in a semi-Ted Leo fashion, at least in regards to the vocal delivery.  But, in the spectrum of the album, it fits in perfectly, displaying the band’s willingness to fill Free Yourself with nothing but their twelve best recorded songs.  Honestly, you can’t throw a single song on this album to the side; every single song is great in its own right, so sticking them all together in perfect order is yet another reason while Flesh Lights should be considered by all as a band at top of their game.

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Free Yourself is available from 12XU.

Little Cinema – Adventure

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adventureRating: ★★★½☆

Little Cinema is the project of Hollywood Gossip’s Tyler Womack and The Lovely Sparrow’s Shawn Jones. Adventure is their debut album under this moniker, one of which that combines detailed songwriting accompanied by the well-crafted instrumentation of these two gentleman. This ten track record is filled with spunky and witty indie-pop ditties about pretty much everything from bird watching to fire safety and everything else along the ways of a proper Adventure.

The group opens quite bouncily with “Over The Garden,” a track whose brevity and seeming simplicity serves as a tasty introduction to the sounds of Little Cinema. Though, while the combination of woodsy percussion, acoustic guitar and nasal vocals sounds stripped at first, when you start to really listen you can hear this undercurrent of gentle cello that runs underneath the rest of the instruments’ vibrant bubbling. This number is short and sweet, but simultaneously has this finesse about it—be it in the lyrics or the subtleties in the instrumentation that pushes through—that peaks your interest in what this band has in store for you.

They push forward into the body of their debut quickly and with grace with numbers such as “Diving Board—” which features the lovely vocals of Dana Falconberry for that always-appealing interchanging male/female duo. This song describes a night of skinny-dipping and breaking and entering, accompanied by none other than handclaps. Yea, you heard right, handclaps!!! Interestingly enough, this, as well as other standout number “Birdwatchers of the World, Unite!” features the percussion of Shivery Shakes drummer, Marcus Haddon. His contribution is notable on both of these tracks, adding an element of jazzy sheen to the mix of things.

When you reach the end of the Adventure that Little Cinema has taken you on, with “Fire Safety,” you don’t feel quite ready to stop listening to this album. The last track is one of the best you’ll encounter on this record in that it combines all the elements that you’ve already fallen in love with thus far on the record. The bounciness from the beginning is there in fully fleshed out percussion, Womack’s songwriting is effortless and detailed, and the vocals are pushed to their emotive brink as the song progresses. There are moments of softness and delicacy that are juxtaposed with moments when the instruments all combine alongside the intensity in the vocals—both of which gives you something to hold on tightly to keep up with the band. Adventure is an exciting and promising start for Little Cinema and I look forward to seeing what they give us next.

 

The Twilight Sad – Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave

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The_Twilight_Sad_-_Nobody_Wants_to_Be_Here_and_Nobody_Wants_to_LeaveRating: ★★★★☆

The last we heard from Scottish indie rockers, The Twilight Sad, was No One Can Ever Know, back in 2012. While this was a little bit of a set back for the group that has brought you excellent albums like Forget the Night Ahead, they’ve got their chance once again to add to their growing discography as well as to your listening catalogues. Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave, besides being a ridiculously long title for a record, is oddly fitting, describing the feeling of uncomfortable ease that a lot of the tracks touch on in their swirling darkness.

If you’ve never listened to any of this group’s previous works, you ought to know that this band has this powerful darkness that presents itself in various forms. Be it in the accented vocal strength of James Graham, the thick layers of gritty guitars, or the oft-crashing percussion—this band does dark indie-rock very well. The opening three tracks serve as an excellent beginning for The Twilight Sad, each one embarking on a different twist on the pleasant discomfort aforementioned earlier. First track “There’s a Girl in the Corner,” has the band starting slowly, as if to introduce themselves again to you, but there’s still Graham’s vocals spinning you a tale of some figure in the background while electric guitar spirals like smoke around the whole thing, which eventually leads to Graham belting earnestly.

Then you hit superstar track “Last January,” and you become completely enraptured: the slow swirl of the first track has been replaced with a quick paced number, fronted by the simmering drums which beg you to tap along to them. They reach the chorus, and there are these waves of softer synthesizer that just fall gently over the track, melting everything together, producing an audible emission of that feeling of uneasy comfort that’s so addictive to listen to.

Later on you get the deeper set tracks from this band, each number becomes grounded in itself and takes you further down the rabbit hole. While the first tracks really pulled you in, the last tracks hold you under. “Pills I Swallow” is a four-minute exercise in reserved power, with its multi-level vocals and the tinkling of delicate electronic elements. Then “Leave the House,” is the quietest this band gets; this stripped track has Graham’s rich Scottish voice in total control of the ballad before it switches from quiet to loud.

Like earlier records from The Twilight Sad, this one has every inclination of a grower—while there are those immediate tracks that get you first go-round the record player, the band gives you numbers where the energy is embedded and surfaces with further inspection. For their fourth full-length album, this group proves they’ve got more to give you and it happens to be pretty damn good.

Shivery Shakes – Three Waves & A Shake

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shivsRating: ★★★★☆

Shivery Shakes are a local outfit consisting of the mergence of two past bands: The Bubbles and International Waters. These four gentlemen released a self titled EP back in 2012 and have been making waves through their live act all over town in which they’ve showed off their fuzzy lo-fi sunshine garage pop. This debut, Three Waves & A Shake, is their first attempt at a full-length release, and its combination of witty lyrics buried under the sheen of shimmery guitars will have you shaking it all day long.

“Recurring Dreams” may be your first introduction to this band, but it’s definitely not a bad place to start your love affair. Immediately, you get a bit of wandering guitar that sounds like it’s waking up as you ease into their sound. Following is some gentle whistling that screams easy-going and then the hazy vocals chime into the mix; they’ve got this slight echo/reverb to them that makes them feel far away and yet right next to you while they engage you in the narrative of the song. Meanwhile, the guitars are wide-awake, and so is the track, but it keeps pulling you further in. Two-thirds of the way through, you get this little break down where the vocals kick out and the band gets to simmer their way back to a boil, layering the instrumentation upon itself again before they launch into final chorus. This an excellent beginning to the record, one which should not only have you hooked, but swooning.

What’s special about this bouncy record is that this group avoids the phenomenon of redundancy that often overtakes albums, such as this, that fall into the genre of fuzzy jangle rock. Until its close, Shivery Shakes keep it fresh and crispy, but not overdone. Take “Strange Houses,” the eighth track on the record, to be an example of the band reinventing their sound to keep you interested. Here, you can hear the Surfer Blood-esque crashing waves of guitars that melt into one riff after another. While this starts as a mellow tune, soon we unearth this uneasy feeling with the band. The song asks, “at the moment I lose it, how will I tell?” prompting a shift from the winding sunset riffs to cutting tangy guitar for a moment of nervous instrumentation before a return to the chill vibes of earlier. It’s the little details like this that make each song stand apart from the other and make you want to spin this record from start to finish.

This album is brimming with sunny jangly pop/rock that makes you want to put on your sunglasses and take a drive with the windows down, seizing full advantage of the lack of fall weather that Austin is benefitting from these days. Hell, wherever you are, put on Three Waves & A Shake and your sunglasses and have a blast dancing with this record and Shivery Shakes. You won’t be sorry you did: music-scout’s honor.

 

Bear’s Den – Islands

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BearsDenIslandsRating: ★★★½☆

Bear’s Den is a three-part band from London that first caught my attention when I saw them open for someone right here in Austin. I was struck by their folksy based indie rock—some of the songs had that immediate tangibility in the live setting that comes with a group with good energy and chemistry. Islands is their debut record, one which has the group giving you ten tracks of this energy into one neat package for your consumption.

The band opens this debut with “Again,” which will immediately catch your attention for its looping banjo, full sounding acoustic guitar and steady drumbeat. This track has a cyclical kind of build to it, each time the band comes back around to the chorus they seem to have gained some steam. The vocals have this hollow yet vastly deep quality to them that intensify with the song as well as the addition of backing vocals to make them emotionally charged. Genre wise, this opener harkens that of folk, rock, and pop all in one, which is the case for the first part of the album.

Track, “Isaac,” takes a different approach than what you’ve heard thus far on Islands, turning to a softer sound that has me reminiscent of some Great Lake Swimmers track. It’s a pleasantly delicate tune, beginning with the plucking of banjo and acoustic guitar and vocals, devoid of any percussion. This song crawls along, the gang vocals combining with the instruments to generate a beauty of a number that finds itself in the lack of a steady beat created by drums. The rhythm comes directly from the expressed elements—it’s simple but also simply moving. Other well-crafted numbers that strike my fancy later on in the album are “When You Break” which has the band building up the suspense all the way through the track to its end. The song has this bubbling undercurrent of an electronic element that you may not even notice until the other elements cut out before the bridge kicks in. This is one of the best numbers on the record, and its got me listening over and over, each time the little nuances of it becoming apparent and appreciated.

While Islands is very easy on the ears, at places, it feels almost too easy. I’m left wanting some tracks that push the boundaries of folksy quiet indie rock, whereas a lot of these fall into the Mumford & Sons pattern of alternating quiet moments of stripped sound with loud twangy jam sessions. Bear’s Den moves beyond this at times, but if that’s your bag, this band does it well. Find a track or two to jam to before you hear it too many times on the radio.

 

 

Kevin Morby – Still Life

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kevin-morby-stilllifeRating: ★★★★☆

You may know Kevin Morby better through his other projects such as The Babies, or has bass work in Woods. However, Still Life is his second release for this solo development, a follow up to Harlem River, which came out last year. If you’re still only familiar with this man’s other achievements, it’s time to bust out your headphones or your speakers and have a listen to Still Life, which shows the pure talent that you already knew Morby possessed, but channeled in a raw and real form; the sincerity of this record will have you coming back to it over and over again.

The album comes to you humbly and asks you to “take [it] as you feel—” a line that comes on “Amen,” which you won’t come to until later, but this is an instance of the songwriting aptly describing the listening experience. From the moment you press play on opening “The Jester, The Tramp & The Acrobat,” you get this gentle undercurrent of a rhythm that carries you along while Morby, addressing you as a friend, opens up. The song begins to flesh itself out, transitioning from soft drums and acoustic guitar to some licking electric guitar and a change to a faster pace. Here, we get a bit of a preview as to what this album has in store for us: we get both a subtle and simple side well as the intricately crafted indie-rock-and-roll jam side, all of which is coated in a residual gravity in the songwriting.

While it’s hard to pick a favorite aspect of this record to focus on—both the instrumentation and the lyrics work together in a fantastic combination of mood—the lyrics are constantly are working at your heart, begging for you to let them in. Take any track on this record and you can find a line or two that is stunning in its nature, even removed from context. On a song by song basis, there are numbers like “Drowning” and “All Of My Life” which grip you from start to finish, tying together lines like the threads in a tapestry, leaving you simply stunned at the end product. Here is a man pouring what seems to be the contents of his soul into his craft, laying it all out for you in a sometimes delicate, sometimes rock and roll fueled context.

To put it bluntly and with a cliché, listening to this record feels a bit like falling in love; by the time I reached the ending of Still Life, I was already itching to restart and do it all over again, following Morby through the highs of the jams and especially the lows in his lyrics. It’s all good, and it’s all waiting for you to fall into its depths.

Greylag – s/t

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DOC098-Greylag_AmazonRating: ★★★☆☆

Greylag is a type of goose, but also a band of gentlemen from Portland, Oregon. Their debut, self-titled album out on Dead Oceans is a combination of folk and soft indie rock that offers some grand builds and quiet jams that should put this band on the map of the indie world.

Often, I’m quite intrigued as to what the album artwork has to say about a record and the general aesthetic that it gives to the bands name. Here, we have what resembles an old book or diary, immediately making me believe this record holds intimacy. For the most part, this is a fairly valid reflection, which only becomes more apparent as the record progresses. However, as the band kicks things off with lead single “Another,” you don’t really get this vibe. Instead, what you have is a fireside-dance-party with earthy sounding acoustic guitars looping on top of each other as well as some banjo. This first track reminds me a little bit of a more clean-cut version of Cave Singers—the folk-country-jam breakdown is there, it’s just a bit more refined and produced. While not a bad start to the record, it’s just enough to pull you in to see what the group has to offer.

At first listen, there are some immediate attention grabbers, but the more I listen to this record, the more I’m realizing that the tracks that immediately stand out on first listen aren’t the best to be found here. On the contrary, the more subtle numbers from Greylag are the ones that you can hear the most promise in their sound. Take “Burn On,” as a perfect example of this; it has that personal and stripped gentle quality at first that lets you warm up with the band. They give you this great build up with those bombastic drums from earlier, some group backing vocal, striking lead vocal and that twangy lead guitar. This song is great, and so is the ending track, “Walk The Night.” Here is another stripped down number which works so well for the group, giving out the calm and tranquil energy of solitude of just a man and his guitar.

On the whole, this little release was an impressive start for this band. While there is some obvious room for growth—some of the tracks come across as a bit too repetitive or like other songs on the record—there are still songs that are definitely worth your attention. I’m excited to see what’s to come next from Greylag.

 

Allo Darlin’ – We Come From The Same Place

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HIRESRating: ★★★★☆

Allo Darlin‘ first hit my radar back in 2012 when they released their sophomore record, Europe, and let the world know they have some serious skills when it comes to sunny indie pop. We Come From the Same Place offers a further trek down this road of well crafted glistening pop tunes as well as a beautiful transitional record for a shift to autumn days.

The band opens with “Heartbeat–” a bouncy and ukelele filled little warming up number, which gets you excited for this album by reminding you just what made you fall in love with Allo Darlin’. The real goodness is yet to come, but don’t worry it’s coming soon. Second up is “Kings And Queens,” in which the band picks up the pace and starts to hit their stride. Following that, you get the simply swoon-worthy title track, whose choral hook, complete with backing guitar riff is enough to make anyone tap their toes and jam along with this group. When Elizabeth Morris belts earnestly, “Please believe me, I’ve never said this before,” as the guitar delicately jams along with that jangle in the background, I was jolted from passive to active listener as that sensation of excitement swept over me. Here is where this album hooked me—from here on out I was pretty much on board with anything this band wanted to throw out.

This track isn’t, of course, the only stand out number on the record, as later on you get numbers like “Bright Eyes” and “Crickets In The Rain.” The first of these two songs turns out to be one of the more rock-laden tracks on the record and begins with a little stripped down electric guitar. What makes this track so special is the duet between male and female vocals that you don’t really find anywhere else on the album. Combined with that squalling electric guitar that takes off on its own at the end of the track, this number is infectious. “Crickets In The Rain” gives that perfect for autumn combination of sunny sounding instrumentation with a melancholy twist—be it in the lyrics or Morris’ vocal quality. It’s the perfect mirror to falling leaves or rainy days mixed with the still stagnantly hot Texas sun.

My small issue with this record is that it seems to be lacking a little power punch to push it through to the end. The songwriting is brilliant, the tracks are all pretty good, but I needed one more spectacular, knock-it-out-of-the-park song towards the end of the record to push me head-over-heels in love. That being said, since the songs are slow-burners at the end of the record, perhaps I’ve just missed the needle in the haystack and that missing piece will become evident with repeated listening. You have a listen and hear for yourself.

 

Sea Pinks – Dreaming Tracks

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SPRating: ★★★★½

Sea Pinks are a group from Belfast, whose Bandcamp page touts that they got their start by being “inspired by sea glass, bleached grass and ghost guitars.” That being said, their catalogue, including their incredible most recent full length Freak Waves, adheres to these stimuli. This time around, the band has come out and said it— it’s no coincidence that Dreaming Tracks is called just that.

“Dream Happening” is a killer way to open the album, let alone an album called Dreaming Tracks. There’s this moment of suspense before the band starts with a long drawn out note, and in this brief space that somehow seems like it lasts forever, you are dying, waiting for the band to kick off and get going. When they begin, its like a bath of warmth and light- the guitars are springy and bounce through the tune, while the vocals mirror this effect. The drums are easy, popping along in the background, giving you the perfect head bobbing little rock jam. Here is a wonderful way to begin.

There are some noticeable differences from last go round, mostly in the production of the sound. It seems like there is a clearer quality in this recording—they’ve cut the little bit of fuzz on the guitars and vocals, which makes this album lean more towards the outright jangly rock genre and less so in the camp of garage rock. However, it’s not completely gone from the fuzz, but rather Dreaming Tracks takes things to the detached garage level of jangly rock. This shift is apparent on “Waiting For You (To Go),” in which the guitars cleanly flit and flirt in and out of the percussion, vocals and more cello (who doesn’t love any kind of strings in indie rock?). There’s a certain clean tightness to the guitar work, especially in the breakdown at the end of the track and the freshness does the band good on this album to prevent a replica of their past record.

It’s also very important that the presence of the cello in a lot of the tracks gets noted—simply put that cello pulls me right back in each time I start to wander in the guitar riffs. Take beauty and end track “Invisible Lines” for example, in which the breaks for the string work gives the track an elegance that is totally unexpected for this genre. And yet, it works so well, not only with the jingle jangle, but with deep cutting lyrics as well; the last line of the song is “You’re in the prime of your life/you’re in the dreamtime between worlds.” It’s these little touches that remind you that you’re listening to damn well crafted music here.

Honestly, Sea Pinks can do no wrong by my ears—these last two albums have been spectacular collections of deeply interesting, as well as enjoyable songs. What are you doing still reading this review when you could be jamming? Go listen! GO!

 

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