DEVIN KING

Susanna | Flowers of Evil

DEVIN KING — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:54:00 GMT

Rune Grammofon (2008)
Flowers of Evil — a covers record, though it includes two originals — lacks power.

Max Tundra | Parallax Error Beheads You

DEVIN KING — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:59:18 GMT

Domino (2008)
It begins with a MIDI organ and Tundra singing like Little Orphan Annie: “I landed in somebody’s lap, between the iPod and yellow trucker cap.”

Luomo | Convivial

DEVIN KING — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:25:27 GMT

Huume (2008)
Known also for his more ambient work as Vladislav Delay, Luomo is the house-music moniker of Finnish producer Sasu Ripatti.

Wilderness | (k)no(w)here

DEVIN KING — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:25:32 GMT

Jagjaguwar (2008)
This could prove strenuous, but the album is more contemplative than didactic — a (k)no(w)here that’s difficult to study but easy to inhabit.

School of Seven Bells | Alpinisms

DEVIN KING — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:52:37 GMT

Ghostly International (2008)
School of Seven Bells piece together two points of reference: the electronic music made popular by the Postal Service, Volvo ads, etc.; and the tightly controlled feedback of shoegaze.

Pedal | Pedal

DEVIN KING — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:27:04 GMT

Staubgold (2008)
Any undergrad who has a few Satie discs in his or her collection — for studying and making out! — would find the same passive ambiance on this album.

Growing | All the Way

DEVIN KING — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:45:29 GMT

Social Registry
You get the sense that Growing have been looking more and more toward the other side of the drone spectrum — that of the tiny computer.

Brian Wilson

DEVIN KING — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:03:12 GMT

That Lucky Old Sun | Capitol/EMI
Brian Wilson and his karaoke-smooth backing band the Wondermints have instead given us something on par with 1970s Beach Boys.

Hollerpalooza

DEVIN KING — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:15:22 GMT

Eli Reed says he’s better than Otis
Eli “Paperboy” Reed seems dubious about my following him for a few hours before and after his five o’clock Lollapalooza show in Chicago’s Grant Park last Sunday.

Eli “Paperboy” Reed seems dubious about my following him for a few hours before and after his five o’clock Lollapalooza show in Chicago’s Grant Park last Sunday. “I’m not doing anything,” he says, looking up from two girls he’s chatting to as I walk up. I dispel his fears that I’m looking to play Rock Band with an up-and-coming R&B star. If he wants, we can just have a quick chat.

Reed says goodbye quickly and we’re off to his band the True Loves’ dressing room. But we’re inside just long enough to compliment the A/C — God’s gift to August — when he observes we’ve only 20 minutes to snag grub from the buffet. We’re up again and moving.

Actually, Eli Reed seems dubious about my being able to write an interesting article about him at all. While I’m eating lunch with him and the True Loves, he keeps asking, “What’s this article about again?”, his eyebrows raised over rectangular, bank-teller glasses that he eschews during performances. It’s no wonder — pretty much anything written on the guy (a) calls him a Jewish kid from Massachusetts or (b) compares him with any number of soul legends from the ’60s or (c) calls him a Jewish (!) kid (!!) from Massachusetts who likes gospel music (!!R.U.F’NKIDDING?!?!). Yet according to Eli, the Dutch have US writers beat with the compact headline: “Courageous Jew Guy Knows What To Do With Jesus Music.”

“So, what’s this article about again?” I tell him I’ve been thinking about Monterey Pop, the difference between . . .

“Otis! And I’m gonna be Otis! Say this [hands up and swooping for emphasis]: ‘ELI REED SAYS HE’S BETTER THAN OTIS!’ Say that, put that in the article.” The band and I giggle, and for a second I zone out thinking about Otis Redding at the Monterey Pop Festival singing “I’ve Been Loving You.” Shot on 16mm, D.A. Pennebaker’s famous footage of the performance catches Otis from the back during part of this song, the 25-year-old (six months from death) bending and swaying, his body fighting against (reaching out to?) an insistent spotlight that cuts his silhouette and overtakes the frame, blinding the viewer.

“I mean, obviously, Monterey was important because it was the moment that all these boundaries came down.” Musical boundaries, Eli means, the moment when the folk festivals and the rock festivals and the country festivals and the soul festivals and whatever genre we’re putting Ravi Shankar in came together and decided to be one big lollapalooza.

Mars

DEVIN KING — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:15:22 GMT

The Complete Studio Recordings, NYC 1977-1978 | No More
Career-spanning records usually mark a band’s evolution; this outfit existed for just two years, so the material sketches a near-perfect first and sole album.

Women

DEVIN KING — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:03:13 GMT

Women | Flemish Eye
Women initially sound like most Beach Boys- or Kinksinfluenced bedroom pop.

Idol hands

DEVIN KING — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:45:23 GMT

Mission Of Burma at Pitchfork Music Fest, Union Park, Chicago, July 18, 2008
The band, as always, sounded fantastic, especially if you’d been listening to the record all week in preparation.

Sic Alps

DEVIN KING — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:52:25 GMT

U.S. Ez | Siltbreeze
U.S. Ez , emboldened by all sorts of sloppiness, works in the way of Lomax’s porch recordings, forcing rock and roll back into a folk tradition.

Paper Thin Stages

DEVIN KING — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:39:54 GMT

Magic Jar of Jar of Animal | Self-released
For their new album the band wrangle originally non-discrete material into 11 song-like morsels.

Spontaneous celebrations

DEVIN KING — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:43:06 GMT

Oxford Collapse get friendly
Last week, after dinner with Oxford Collapse, we walk back over to Chicago’s Empty Bottle to watch the openers.

ALL TOGETHER NOW: The best part about seeing Oxford Collapse is that the show isn’t about them.

Oxford Collapse, "The Birthday Wars," (mp3)

Last week, after dinner with Oxford Collapse, we walk back over to Chicago’s Empty Bottle to watch the openers. During Tigercity’s set (smooth, wooden), I stand near Adam Rizer, the Collapse’s bassist and singer, as a stream of friends queue up to say hello: the buddy from an old band; the writer in town covering a furniture fair; a riled-up softball team. (They lost 24-1, but they had a Gatorade cooler filled with vodka. Is that why they lost? Or is that how they cope?) The warmth flowing from Rizer during each meeting is infectious — he includes me in every introduction, and suddenly the left-fielder is telling me high-school skateboarding stories.

If my memories of this Oxford Collapse (who’re coming to T.T. the Bear’s this Tuesday) show skip quickly from Rizer to his friends, it’s not to suggest that he or his bandmates lack presence. Rather, it’s a testament to their sincerity and inclusiveness — rarities in indie rock. Their shows create a space for eager friend making and attentive energy; even as the crowd thins for the Collapse’s set, the band energize the remaining audience, and before long beer is spraying everywhere, a sign of success. Rizer and guitarist/singer Mike Pace bounce around the stage making faces and pulling shapes. Midway through, Rizer catches my eye and repeats a move from two songs earlier to another audience member: he leans over and yells the lyrics in my face. The snippet I catch: “This only happens once a year, these anniversaries.” This kind of interaction is part of what’s best about seeing this band — the show isn’t about them, it’s about a bunch of sweaty friends up too late on a Thursday, a spontaneous celebration.

Although popular opinion likens the Oxford Collapse to a cadre of late-’80s indie-rockers — the thin, reverberating guitars of early R.E.M. with a touch of finger-picked bass from the Minutemen — there’s a helping of psychedelia in Pace’s layered delay and drummer Dan Fetherston’s tom-heavy beats. To put all this on record for the forthcoming Bits (Sub Pop), the band chose an odd recording process: two sessions, each with a different buddy, each buddy with a totally different recording style. Chad Matheny recorded on an old four-track; Eric Emm took a more conventional high-end approach.

Scorch Trio

DEVIN KING — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:12:52 GMT

Brolt! | Rune Grammofon
Brolt! | Rune Grammofon

Praising Arizona

DEVIN KING — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:09:10 GMT

Sun City Girls survey an unwieldy legacy
As a tribute to the man and a goodbye to the band he was a part of for more than 20 years, the Bishop brothers, as Brothers Unconnected, are touring the country, and playing an acoustic set of Sun City Girls songs.

VIDEO: Sun City Girls, "Apna Desh"

When you’re poking around YouTube for footage of the (in)famous performances of Sun City Girls, one of the first things to turn up is a section from their video The Halcyon Days of Symmetry (see above.) Dating from the late ’80s, it shows the band playing the Sun Club in Tempe, in their home state of Arizona. The song they’re performing, “Apna Desh,” is a cover of the title track from a 1972 Bollywood movie. In the original Bollywood version, a solidly built man with a Burt Reynolds moustache and white velour pants sings to a vampy blonde who wiggles all over the floor, shakes her breasts, and is visibly happy to behold the mustachio’d fellow.

Things are a little different in the Sun City Girls version. It’s almost as though the two (actual) brothers of the band, Alan and Richard Bishop, were attempting to play the characters: Alan as the winking hunk, slinking his hands over his bass and singing; Richard, donning a purple lab coat, writhing his upper body in circles as he plays guitar, happy to behold the audience. As the camera pans between the two, a drum set comes into focus with the largest ride cymbals I’ve ever seen. It’s so large, it almost obscures the drummer. Suddenly, the video jumps to the end of the song, where a bespectacled man with a moustache (looking like an evil scientist out of Dr. Who) is in the midst of a serious drum solo. His hands move furiously, his eyes widen from behind his lenses, he bares his teeth while his hands race faster and faster over the toms and cymbals. Then the video just cuts off.

That drummer is Charles Gocher, a member of Sun City Girls, the adopted brother of Alan and Richard, and, in February of 2007, at the age of 54, a victim of cancer (after a prolonged fight). As a tribute to the man and a goodbye to the band he was a part of for more than 20 years, the Bishop brothers, as Brothers Unconnected, are touring the country, showing clips of films Gocher made throughout his life, and playing an acoustic set of Sun City Girls songs. They come to the Brattle Theatre next Thursday.

Writing about Gocher for the on-line magazine Perfect Sound Forever, Alan Bishop says, “Some have called Gocher the last great beatnik. Others have called him a mad genius. Several still believe he was a serial killer who was never caught. Many people were afraid of him or had no idea what to make of him. Whatever he was, few of you deserve to know of him.”

Gas

DEVIN KING — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:47:41 GMT

Nah Und Fern | Kompakt
Kompakt label head Wolfgang Voigt re-releases the four discs of his Gas project — long hailed as some of the best albums in ambient techno — along with a double LP of extended material.

Collections of Colonies of Bees

DEVIN KING — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:45:29 GMT

Birds | Radium
If one extension of math rock is Battles’ experiments with poppy aggression, Collections of Colonies of Bees prove that the genre doesn’t have to sublimate angst into vocoded aggression.