nine

65-72


Archie Bronson Outfit - Fur (Domino) 2005

Part of the scrappy dappy doo phalanx of Domino UK's roster. A trio of cranky British men who you could slide into the post-2000 re-discovery and re-orientation of blues music that White Stripes are obviously figureheads for. And like the White Stripes I always enjoy the rush of listening to them... but don't often listen to them. For whatever reason.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Arcwelder - Xerxes (Touch and Go) 1994

Another entry into the 90s post-hardcore music trope that liked to engage a bass groove, or some weird method of funkishness without ever being truly funky. Helmet were the kings of the minimal jazz-trained riff avalanche, and Arcwelder were perhaps minor Dukes in some peripheral hamlet. Still, for $3.00 at the CD/BD castoff bin on Sainte Catherine St. in Montreal... well worth it.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Arizona Amp and Alternator - S/T (Thrill Jockey) 2005

Welcome to Howe Gelb of the Arizona Gelbs. Most folks would probably consider Giant Sand to be his main gig... given that it has the oldest roots, starting in mid-to-late 70s... but he has recorded as/with Friends of Dean Martinez, OP8, Howe and the above alias. As AAAA he gets a little help in the shop from Grandaddy's Jason Lytle, M. Ward, Scout Niblett. Here at his loosest and dustiest, one can imagine Howe in greasy overalls w/ nametag taking a break to try out a new version of the band name title track; there are four different takes to choose from. It's an exceedingly easy-going affair and if you don't mind a little meandering from time to time then it'll get a smile out of you.


Arnold - Hillside (Creation/Columbia) 1998

Another since-closed spot in Fredericton for used CD shopping was The Magic Forest on Queen St. It was primarily a stereo store but stocked music as a sideline... and a few of their customers were radio or newspaper reviewers who had boxes and boxes of freebie discs to pawn for credit against gear. Arnold were a British three piece from the late-90s whose Canadian label seemed to have sent out so many playcopies so as to make buying it new unnecessary. Curious. Therefore at $1.99 you could enjoy the dreamy/folkiness of the album and background the creepy vocal similarities to David Gilmour.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Joseph Arthur - Come to Where I’m From (Real World) 2000

Another Magic Forest purchase. A Middle-American singer/songwriter with a strange tinge of Australia... to my ears. "Discovered" by Peter Gabriel and signed to the Real World label... occasional over-production taints what is otherwise strong acoustic guitar observations that pendulum between personal and bigger picture explorations. Depending on your tolerance for earnestness, this could work for you.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Ash - 1977 (Different) 1996


Ash - Free All Angels (Kinetic) 2001

Whaddaya know... another eBay buy (1977) and Magic Forest find (Free All Angels). An Irish trio that added a female British second guitarist... Ash stepped out of the shadow cast by tepid and string-filled Brit-pop and re-ignited the thrashy American pop/garage flame left guttering by early Lemonheads, Hüsker Dü, and that crew. It was the kind of stuff that Halifax bands like Sloan and Superfriendz were really good at... just fizzy and jumpy with hooks aplenty.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Atari Teenage Riot - Burn, Berlin Burn (Grand Royal) 1996

I had a brief love affair with extreme electronic music in the mid-80s via groups like Skinny Puppy and Ministry and the run-off from many other synth bands gone feral. As that scene played itself out there seemed to be a slow liquifying and blending of harder edged Industrial and bland House music... yielding a toothlessly aggressive dance hybrid. ATR was a German group that remembered you had to break shit in order to get your point across. They took the ever-speeding breaks of Drum n Bass and added rust-caked guitar riffs and guy/girl shouted sloganeering to the mix. In the end they sometimes came across as the most pissed off cartoon characters you'd ever meet... but with a swath of great songs in the wake.

eight

57-64


Arab Strap - Elephant Shoe (Jetset) 1999


Arab Strap - Red Thread (Chemical Underground) 2001


Arab Strap - Monday Night at the Hug and Pint (Matador) 2003


Arab Strap - The Last Romance (Transdreamer) 2006

OK. So those are the rest of the albums. One thing that seems to usually hold true about favourite albums is that they tend to be the first one you hear by a band... doesn't matter if it's their first or their last. Ergo, my favourite Arab Strap album is Elephant Shoe (by the way, if you mouth the words "Elephant Shoe" to a deaf person who reads lips they will think you're saying "I Love You." So do it). I would play a few songs from this album if I had to nutshell their sound for someone: slow and deliberate but with impeccable hooks and bridges from verse into chorus. Aidan Moffat does his deadpan speak/singing and Malcolm Middleton keeps completely minimal on drum machines, bass blurbs and the occasional, relatively crushing, guitar attack. The earlier albums had the slight flaw of extended duration... with miserablist music this can snap the dramatic tension. After Elephant Shoe, Red Thread was a refinement of all things Strap: minimal and extended musical themes, the fever chart of paranoia and infidelity of each doomed relationship. Monday at the Hug and Pint showed a deviation from form... more diversity in instrumentation at least... hinting at a slight weariness with their lot in musical life. Last year, after a decade, they decided to call it a day... but they went out swinging with their liveliest and, despite my above statement, perhaps best album. The Last Romance is one of those albums that some bands would make to signal a tidal shift in their career, but Arab Strap used it as their exit from the ten years of "no exit" existentialism they'd conjured. Good work.
++++++++++++++++++


NQ Arbuckle - Last Supper in a Cheap Town (Six Shooter) 2005

A play copy from a cool alt.country label in Toronto. NQ is one of those country singers who can take a tired form, the "truck left me, girlfriend died, dog broke down" genre of dustbowl opera and blow out the clichés like birthday candles. He blends the absurd detail driven poetry of Tom Waits with the down-out-and-kicked-at blues of Townes Van Zandt.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Arcade Fire - Funeral (Merge) 2005

A little band from Montreal. I think they're going to be big soon.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Archers of Loaf - Icky Mettle (Alias) 1993


Archers of Loaf - Vee Vee (Alias) 1995

One of the regrets you live with as a long-time music fan is those in between days where you feel the need, either economically or otherwise, to unload part of your collection. I used to have 4 or 5 Archers of Loaf albums... now I have two. I want those others back... but the label they were on no longer exists. Boo hoo. The driving force behind Archers of Loaf was Eric Bachmann... and he is still around, having released albums as Barry Black, Crooked Fingers and most recently under his own name. They sounded like a heavy band that was halfway between drunk and over-caffeinated and kept teetering between the two poles. The two guitars traded off jangly arpeggios and low-tuned washes of sound... y'know how a lot of early/mid 90s bands were called angular? Archers were angular. Bachman took Pavement's non sequitur lyric and added a rough-edge yawp to drive it home. Icky Mettle had the energy of angry school-age crushes gone wrong, whereas Vee Vee was darker, harder and weirder... but still scored a hit with "Harnessed in Slums." Anyone want to give me the other three albums? I'm waiting.

seven

49-56


Anoice - Remmings (Important) 2006

Next in the series of post-rock review offerings is this Japanese six piece. This is what I said in my Exclaim! review:

Anoice are a young Japanese sextet together for just over two years. Remmings is their first album and probably a play on the L/R transposition… ergo, Lemmings. In the absence of other biographical facts we have a work that is a veritable sample platter of styles and approaches. Only four of the nine tracks are titled, these being the more “rock” pieces built around piano, guitar, drums and viola. “Asprin Music” [sic] has a bass chug that drags along strings, synths and drum machines in its wake, finding a point halfway between Radiohead and label-mates Larsen. “Kyoto” has an echo chamber piano and sudden crashing drum parts that feel like late Three Mile Pilot/early Broken Heart Procession. The three central (and shorter) untitled tracks smell of interludes, either through abstraction or paring down of instrumentation. The opening and closing tracks are tonally matched: deliberate pacing, meandering figures, emphasis on space and pure sound — easily the most interesting pieces here. The album has a pleasant atmosphere and the band are talented instrumentalists, but they often grasp at ideas just out of reach only to lay hands on fairly generic substitutes. They warrant keeping an eye on, though.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Antenna - Hideout (Mammoth) 1993

One of the more endearing and beloved figures in the the early days of so-called "Indie Rock" was Boston's Juliana Hatfield. Before she was an honorary Lemonhead and then went off on her own she was a member of the trio Blake Babies. Sharing songwriting credits and occasional vocal duties was bandmate John P. Strohm, who started Antenna along with other ex-Baby, drummer Freda Love. Hideout is their second album, and first without Ms. Love on drums. The sound is a little closer to "Rock" than "rock," but it's a good "Rock" with shiny choruses, power chords and whispered lyrics that don't say much, but say it nicely.
++++++++++++++++++++


Anthony - Neu York (Secret Crush) 2004

Anthony Reynolds is a man of many pseudonyms, recording under his full name, this truncated "first-name-only" version and in bands Jack and Jacques. Confused? Well each of the projects have similar aspects but with individualized characters... like a big close-knit family. The Anthony work has a love for mid-to-late 70s David Bowie and Lou Reed, but with a certain affinity for grabbing found voices and sounds and making the whole thing sound like a audio tour through Soho on a late summer afternoon.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Antony and the Johnsons - Now I am a Bird (Secretly Canadian) 2005

Much-fêted and award-grabbing release from the pandrogynous Antony Hegarty, who parlayed his toast of the town status into a rolodex choking array of guest spots with everyone from CoCoRosie to Lou Reed (again). With an Andy Warhol/VU fascination (that's Candy Darling on the album cover), Antony works his near-falsetto to create an atmosphere that is comforting, alien and a little seedy all at the same time. I'm still working out how much I do or don't like this one, but it is definitely worth the time.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Appleseed Cast - Mare Vitalis (Deep Elm) 2000

This label was/is much maligned for propping up and pushing out a seemingly endless queue of undifferentiated punk/pop/emo bands whose sheer numbers triggered a kind of critical mass and ensuing scene that belied the fact that no one seemed to like any of the artists. Appleseed Cast stand a little to the left of all this... preferring the pocket-sized epic gesture of instrumental post-rock married to the tension and drama of early Sunny Day Real Estate. It doesn't always work, but when it does it can make you all shivery.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Appliance - Imperial Metric (Mute) 2001

Another one of my cheap eBay purchases. British 3 piece that, at their best, combine the dark bass groove of Joy Division/New Order with the drone wash of Spacemen 3. For better or worse listening to this, their second album, is often an exercise in deciding what each track reminds you of... though it usually reminds you of other great bands.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Arab Strap - The Week Never Starts Around Here (Matador) 1996


Arab Strap - Philophobia (Matador) 1998

Here are the first two of the six Arab Strap records I proudly own (I'm missing a live album called Mad for Sadness, but that's about it for full lengths). The core membership of the group is the duo of Macolm Middleton and Aidan Moffat. A neat side note is that one of the first things I remember buying at Backstreet when I started working there was a double CD titled Alison Rae by a Scottish group called Bay. It was pleasantly dour acoustic stuff with a pretty good cover of Nick Drake's song "Which Will." What I never realized until I was into my third or fourth Arab Strap album is that Aidan Moffat was also a member of Bay. I'll leave the individual album detail stuff for the next post.

six

Time to backtrack a little and pick up some of the quote unquote experimental releases that aren't filed in sequence with the rock albums I've been going through up 'til now.

41-48


μ-Ziq Vs The Auteurs - S/T (Astralwerks) 1994

There are a handful of people who broke away from early rave culture electronics to make more easily accessible music for the curious but rock-centric masses (Chemical Bros., Prodigy, Moby). Then there are a handful who stayed closer to the dancefloor but f@#^ed things up with harder beats, unstable ADD tempos and the noise of machines straining. Mike Paradinas (μ-Ziq) is one of the latter. On this outing he takes the music of fellow UK curmudgeons The Auteurs and keeps things fairly chill... think of recent remixes by Four Tet or Caribou and you'd be on the right track. Pardinas also runs the Planet Mu label to continue spreading the drum and bass culture of bedroom geekdom. I actually bought this from Haley's Pawn Shop near the stone bridge on Main St. Believe it or not.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


0/R - Varied (12k) 2001

*0 is Nosei Sakata, a Japanese artist whose alias indicates the process of rendering nothingness, i.e. anything multiplied to zero equals zero. R is Richard Chartier, another stylist in the realm of near-silence. This collaboration is fairly "audible" for them, working in the soundscape of digital edit clicks and clouds... by the last of the seven tracks a fair amount of density has accrued. This whole field of microscopic digital sound is definitely an acquired taste and built in "bullshit" reflexes need to be turned waaaaay down so as not to dart away. It requires extreme patience and closeness of attention, but down in there is a language of music that is often buried when hooks and melody are driving things.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


12twelve - Speritismo (Boa) 2003

Another aspect of Exclaim! reviewing, especially over the long term, is that once you review a few things with particular characteristics you can easily become the "go to guy" for that subgenre. I apparently have unwittingly become the "go to guy" for instrumental post-rock. The problem with this mantle is that 75-80% of all instrumental post-rock is derivative and/or inane, and you can only really talk about how long the tracks are or whether they use more effects than group X. These so-so groups are usually burdened by an excess of technical prowess with an inverse relationship to musical ideas. Occasionally a group like 12twelve make being the "go to guy" ok, though. They are a Spanish four piece that know their way around the weird time signatures and stop/start attacks, but also fill things out with a swing on the beats and some horn fills to elevate it above an algebra project.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


13 & God - S/T (Anticon) 2005

As much as you try to keep up on everything (everything hip, anway), occasionally whole streams pass you by without so much of a dip of the toes. The whole Anticon thing is one of those streams for me, having pigeonholed it as hip-hop and turned both my cheeks. This album pairs up label veterans Themselves (Jel and Doseone) with members of German acoustic/electronic group The Notwist, of whom I've been a fan for awhile and so grabbed it. Not only does the collaboration work, but I found myself gravitating to the tracks that featured Doseone (Adam Drucker) most prominently. Since then I've reacquainted myself with other projects like cLOUDEAD and Why? to hopefully get my toes belatedly wet.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


1-Speed Bike - Droopy Butt Begone! (Constellation) 2000

If the Godspeed You! Black Emperor come across as a little humourless, then drummer/percussionist Aidan Girt could be their darkly sarcastic court jester. His solo project mixes looped and live rhythm pieces that smudge the line between electronic and acoustic music. His manifestos for a post-consumerist quasi-socialist society peek through in the song titles and brief spoken word passages that expound the merits of big business collapse, good french fries and gin. You gotta get behind it.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


23 Skidoo - Culling is Coming (Boutique) 2003

This British group was part of a scene that flourished where particularly mutated strains of dub, funk and industrial music collided back in the late 70s and early 80s. They were often mentioned alongside fellow travelers such as This Heat and A Certain Ratio. They combined elements of noise with rubbery bass-lines and drumming derived from their interest in Burundi, Kodo and Gamelan percussion. This album was originally released in 1983 with each side representing performances at World Music festivals... which was all fine and well, except that at some point they veer away from their gamelan and tape loops and start whacking on amplified metal no doubt disturbing the people who'd come to groove to Peter Gabriel at WOMAD.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


833-45 - Collected No Type e.p.s (No Type) 2001

This one's a bit of a cheat since it was not really officially released. No Type was one of the most prolific and best run electronics netlabels (Canadian to boot) of the early "noughties," releasing nearly 100 mp3 mini-albums to date, all free to download off their site. Some early site regulars, such as Tomas Jirku, went on to release several well respected CDs on international labels. Another favourite of mine was Kevin M. Krebs, or 833-45, who works with manipulated radio noise/signals and environmental sounds to create a thick soup of ambient sound. This disc compiles the four releases on the website from 1999-2001.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


87 Central - Saxmower (Jdk) 2001

This one is a little shadowy. One of a couple things I received from the label back in 2001... 87 Central is Jeff Carey, and he works in a style that blends elements of the first release mentioned in this post (0/R), and the one just preceding (833-45). It takes environmental noise and squashes things down into resonant slabs of tone that hover in the heard/felt zone of sound. Equal parts relaxing and unsettling.

five

33-40


And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - World’s Apart (Interscope) 2005

I appear to be in the minority here, but I think this is their best work. It may scare some folks with it's 70s rock appropriations and its concept album over-arch in theme and response... but I still say it's the best album that Styx never got around to recording. The only thing is I mean that as a compliment, not an insult. That and the fact that the title track is their best song ever too... aaarrrgh.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Laurie Anderson - Big Science (Warner) 1982


Laurie Anderson - Mister Heartbreak (Warner) 1984


Laurie Anderson - Home of the Brave (Warner) 1986

Now she's Mrs. Lou Reed... but back when Lou was floundering a little with albums like Blue Mask and New Sensations, Laurie was breaking new ground with avant garde live shows and recordings using a tickle trunk's worth of invented instruments. Perhaps the weirdest aspect of all is how these albums came out on Warner... the same company for whom Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was "too experimental" in 2002. In 1982, however the track "O Superman"... a single pulsing sampled "ah" with Laurie's vocorder-treated voice reciting the lyrics on top... became a hit. The follow up in 1984 had production by Peter Gabriel and Bill Laswell and the vocal "talents" of William Burroughs. Home of the Brave is the CD version of her live show replete with her tape head violin (a violin with a tape head where the pickup should be, and a bow strung with 1/4 tape recordings), Adrian Belew's rubber guitar and more Burroughs. So when you say 80s music sucked... there are a few bright spots.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Angel’in Heavy Syrup - IV (Monotremata) 1999

When I started doing the radio show I would go through magazine's and web pages and follow links out to labels who might send me stuff to play. Monotremata was a Texas based label with a small roster of releases including this one licensed from British label Alchemy records. The group is a trio of Japanese women who play folk-infused progressive rock that is reminiscent of early Uriah Heep or Deep Purple... only with the hard turned down and the psyche turned up. Not as freaky as some Japanese psychedelia, but pleasant enough to drink red wine along to.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Angels of Light - How I Loved You (Young God) 2001

Michael Gira is one of those iconic veterans of left-field music who manages to surprise and even, occasionally, make music you could play for your mum. Having been the leader of long running tribal noise outfit Swans, Gira smoothed down the teeth on the buzzsaws and eventually a more tranced-out version of the group were around to close the doors. He started the Young God label and Angels of Light nearly simultaneously, and this outing is a large ensemble mostly acoustic affair that expertly does that sound pretty/say ugly thing. Good music if you are serving a meal to those you suspect have said mean things behind your back... especially if you're planning to move on to an evening of Bunuel films.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Animal Collective - Feels (Fat Cat) 2005

I review music for Exclaim! magazine... a Toronto based national free monthly music magazine. Because I'm am geographically removed from the center of the known Canadian universe what is commonly known/thought of as "the good stuff" fails to fall into my hands... actually I should be clearer... I do get piles and piles of excellent experimental stuff, especially since asst. editors now handle the mail-outs. But as for pop stuff, if anything is either "hot" or "cool" or some other desirable temperature some in-house reviewer usually grabs it. But... back before Animal Collective became "cool" they released an album under two of their individual pseudonymns: Avey Tare and Panda Bear: Spirit They've Gone, Spirit They've Vanished. I was smitten, and though along the way these woodland creatures have made some rackety racket of the near-unlistenable variety, albums like Feels more than renew their status in the good books. Following a song-then-almost-song format they resemble early Flaming Lips in mid-drug confusion and jazz/folk overflow. Yum.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Anniversary - Your Majesty (Vagrant) 2001

Around this time in music history pop punk was beginning is long, slow deterioration into goth locker poster oblivian... but some of the savvier kids started toying around with the notion of "maturity" which mostly meant using more keyboards. Bands like Get Up Kids retained the bounce of their more retarded bretheren, but with sensitive piano passages and songs rather than chanted chorus strung between nonsense bridges. Of course this also gave rise to the tear-swept boys of emo, but the blame for that can be spread around. Anniversary were a band that answered the question of what would happen if the lounge content was pushed up juuuust a little in the mix and broken hearts and cheap martinis collided.

four

25-32


American Music Club - San Francisco (Reprise) 1994


American Music Club - Love Song for Patriots (Merge) 2004

The other part of the American Music Club story is the slow build to Mercury... a handful of earlier albums (Engine, California, etc.) that seemed like dry runs with many great songs but not the overall godhead that was to come. On the other side, Mercury's follow-up, San Francisco was a little weaker in comparison. With production that was a little too candy-coated to convey the dark heart of some songs. Three standout tracks are Wish the World Away ("I've got a good one for the collection agency/It's a wish that I could wish the world away"), Cape Canaveral, and What Holds the World Together ("The world is held together by the wind/That blows through Gena Rowlands hair"). San Francisco proved to be the end of the AMC run... except a decade later the pulled off the highly improbable trick of getting back together and putting out Love Songs for Patriots, a new album every bit as good as Mercury (maybe even better). Produced by singer Mark Eitzel and drummer Tim Mooney, it has the tarnished brass feel of their best moments, a slightly expanded palette of instruments and the world weariness of a drifter that spent a decade being batted down by America only to end up back on the same San Francisco barstool he'd left ten years ago.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Amina - AminaminA (Self Released) 2005

We went (M. and me) to see Sigur Ros in Portland, ME last March and Amina were the opening group: An Icelandic quartet of ladies who also played the string sections for the Sigur Ros set. Their own stuff was an intriguing blend of digital/computer triggers and sounds supplemented by wineglasses, front desk bells, xylophones. I grabbed this little e.p. at the merch table and it's fun, but it misses a little of the fun watching them bang away on their tables of junk.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


aMINIATURE - DEPTHfiveRATEsix (Restless) 1994

One of the first big distributors I had dealings with was Cargo Records, an international company with a warehouse in Montreal. It had become increasingly bloated and eventually sank out of site in a tarpit of its own making. But in those last days they shot out tons of playcopies by both great and obscure bands. aMINIATURE were one of those semi-obscure bands with an angular/agressive sound that you'd find on labels like Touch and Go and Quarterstick with increasing regularity through the mid-90s. They also had an Korean lead singer... something that was strangely common during the same time period. Aside from a fresh (at the time) angle on heavier guitar rock, the group may also be credited with a song called Towner on the B-Side that future rock heroes Spoon later covered on their first album.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Tori Amos - Little Earthquakes (Warner) 1991


Tori Amos - Winter (Warner) 1992

During my early, early CD buying years (85-88) I had big crushes on many female singer/songwriter types... Kate Bush in particular comes to mind, but also Jane Siberry, Annie Lennox and even (forgive me) Sarah McLachlan. When Tori Amos released Little Earthquakes it seemed like a culmination of a lot of those other artists' musical styles, but with lyrics that were much more poetically abstract but personal. I tried to keep up with her output from here on out... but an avalanche of girls-at-pianos kinda soured the love affair. The Winter e.p. had the notorious Smells Like Teen Spirit cover and songs by Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones as well.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - S/T (Trance Syndicate) 1997


And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - Source Tags and Codes (Interscope) 2002

Found their first album second hand at the aforementioned Urban Sound Exchange for cheap. I'd read about their chaotic live show and the album bore that out... so I never would have picked them to be signed by a major label . Source Tags and Codes maintained their heavy "pushing the red line" sound, but it also involved a little gentrification in the form of production. A problem that dogs them is that several members write the songs separately, making the albums a little uneven track to track (especially on their most recent album). But more on that later.