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By Robin Smith, May 15, 2012 10:00 am

mewithYou – Ten Stories

Pine Street 2012

Rating: 8/10

To start at the end of all stories, “All Circles” carries a quintessential mewithoutYou lyric executed like one of James Blake’s; it is a singular thought captured out of time, with its significance deemed only by itself. “All circles presuppose they’ll end where they begin but only in their leaving can they ever come back around, all circles presuppose.” That’s the kind of lyric that would be a connective piece amidst the narrative of any other mewithoutYou track, like something that jumps out half way through the story but sort of inadvertently lives in the shadow of the rest of the song. We’ve seen this in Weiss’ song writing over and over, in the bags of marijuana he left out on the track, or the money he gave reluctantly to the track, and all your favourites that seemed to fall out of line in their tracks only to be repaired later on. As a lyricist as obsessed with stories and fables as Weiss is, every lyric walks freely into the other and ties itself onto it in a moment of hypocrite bastadry, and yet what “All Circles” does with its words- the most “my brother and my sister don’t speak to me” of all lines- is have them in orbit for three minutes of repetition to create one of ten stories without ever telling it. As the music grows and grows before its simple climax, Weiss seems to be creating a song meant for a listen as instinctive as it is poetic.

“All Circles” may be my favourite mewithoutYou track of all time, which fills me with a shitonne of guilt because it replaces a song as contrastingly made as “The King Beetle On A Coconut Estate,” which is a descriptive song that delves the deepest Weiss has into storytelling. Regardless, “All Circles” is sold to me the way any track in the band’s career is; it’s a lyric that sounds placed above the melody, actually moving entirely to it. This is the only impulse I have to go on when it comes to mewithoutYou- the construction of their songs, with Weiss playing the narrator as the constant through what has become an expertly diverse career of punk-cores and psych folk- but no amount of time I pour into having an epiphany over the themes of Ten Stories, it will still seem, in many ways, the most at ease the band has been, even if it isn’t necessarily the happiest they’ve been. It flows between its stories with the confidence a band five albums in can afford, with the raucous “Grist For The Malady Mill” going tactful into the moody, crisp “East Enders Wives.” Or, if you’d prefer, “Nine Stories” and “Bears Vision” seem the same story separated for air. Whatever connection these songs make for you, it feels done so easily that an album could simply fall out of these guys.

Moments of this ease produce slabs of indie-rock proper for mewithoutYou, which is a first. “Cardiff Giant” is a twinkly alt-rock track, one entirely made out of guitar riffs and a conventional rock set-up, and it finds its way on the album neatly. And yet the confidence we hear on these new, simpler layers seem to do nothing to demystify Ten Stories, an album much like “All Circles”: never overtly explained, because you’d have to seek out the liner notes to know, really know, that a song on this album acts as an open dialogue about an owl and a walrus, with both parts read by Weiss. Ten Stories regains something cryptic through its words, which is what I’d guess it really shares with Catch For Us The Foxes. For another comparison, it feels as fabled as It’s All Crazy! but with its themes laid with less explicitly for the animal community: “Allah, Allah, Allah” is a very different look at religion from “Nine Stories,” which captures a desperation rather than the universal clarity of insisting “it’s alright!” in the face of spirituality. “Jacob knows a ladder you can climb” is not a lyric sang for joy, but for a different kind of impulse is captured entirely. Our own Channing Freeman noted that this album’s predecessor carried a solution to its own campfire problem: sing along, be happy, two things this album don’t quite entail in the same way- this is, I feel, a dark record, the stories in which Weiss’ animal kingdom gets put in trial and sentenced to hanging- but it remains the work of a band free of inhibition amidst all the soul-searching. In a moment of levity, however, Weiss draws his own comparison between this and the album that came before it, which is that the band will say what it wants to say, basically: “we’ll knead a bit of dough to get by.” Indeed? Ten Stories is at ease with its ambiguity and style-shifting.

And let’s not forget just how much a feat that is for a song writer who has been helplessly searching since day one. While I think I’ll never quite understand the madcap story behind Ten Stories, beyond the animals and the circus clown chilling in the corner, I don’t think I’ll ever forget just how circular mewithoutYou are being with it, right down to that amazing meta-inducing ending. “Only in their leaving can they ever come back ‘round” is a little line of self-help for Ten Stories, as it closes its album by going back to the start and thinking it all through again. Continuity is very much on the mind of this band through their albums, whether it lingers within the broad lyrical aphorisms- you’ll remember “I do not exist” in Brother Sister- or from album to album. You can call “February 1878” a whole song of its own, separate from “January 1979,” but both linger within the other. On Ten Stories, I think, there’s another chapter bring written about death from the breakdown on the railroad tracks; Weiss wonders if he’s “already died” on this album and doesn’t know, though some do, “no certainty exists.” What lingers in all mewithoutYou albums, and in the continuity of these two connective songs, is uncertainty, the thinking things through and coming back around. The way a thought changes in time: “sometimes I think all our thoughts are just things and then sometimes all our things are then thoughts.” And so yes, this is rather a traditional mewithoutYou album, because hasn’t that term moved beyond what musical styles they play in by now? It makes sense that “All Circles” is how it all closes out, with Weiss, as ever, instinctively working his way towards a thought, and with such absurd confidence that we would think he’d already arrived there. One would think he rather suits the concept-album. He kneads a good adventure, after all.

See larger image Ten Stories (Audio CD) List Price: $12.99 USD New From: $8.45 In Stock Used from: $9.78 In Stock Release date May 15, 2012.

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By Rudy Klapper, May 10, 2012 10:00 am

Out of Savannah, Georgia, CUSSES is a nifty little trio that calls to mind 2011 favorites the Jezabels with their sweeping brand of guitar-powered indie and some of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs‘ sass, with frontwoman Angel Bond providing an immediate spark. Their debut album is slated to come out later this year; for now, check out the video and enjoy.

CUSSES – “Worst Enemy”

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By Rudy Klapper, May 9, 2012 10:00 am

The first single off Passion Pit’s sophomore album Gossamer finally dropped a couple days ago, and while “Take A Walk” is definitely a distinctly “Passion Pit” type of tune, the ostensible changes the band is working towards since Manners came out seemingly forever ago (2009) make this one of the summer’s more anticipated releases for me. I like that singer Michael Angelakos is moving away from the falsetto he leaned on so heavily (often to their detriment live, I thought) and the band is focusing more on breezy, groovy melodies that speak to the lazy joy of summer, rather than the supercharged electro pop anthems they became famous for. It’s a slight change in sound, but a welcome one, and if it’s any indication of what’s in store, Gossamer could be great.

Passion Pit – “Take A Walk”

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By Rudy Klapper, May 1, 2012 10:00 am

Punk rockers/heavy beer drinkers Japandroids are inching closer to the release of their sophomore effort Celebration Rock, the follow-up to 2009 zeitgeist and homage to youth and bad/good decisions Post-Nothing. If I’m being cynical, one listen to the album and a highlight like “Fire’s Highway” (and previous 2010 single and addition here, “Younger Us”) makes it clear that nothing’s really changed for these Vancouver-based firebrands. The beer is still eternally cold; the girls are still eternally carefree and wild; youth is still something to be treasured rather than grieved over. So it’s more of the same, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing – few do 21st-century anthems better than these guys, and if you liked Post-Nothing, three years is more than long enough to wait to satisfy a craving for balls-out, fist-pumping rock ‘n roll.

Japandroids – “Fire’s Highway”

See larger image Celebration Rock (Audio CD) List Price: $13.98 USD New From: $13.53 In Stock This title will be released on June 5, 2012.

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By Rudy Klapper, April 25, 2012 10:00 am

Jack White – Blunderbuss

Columbia 2012

Rating: 8/10

It’s a bit surprising to think that Blunderbuss is Jack White’s first proper solo album, coming as it does at an age where people start to think less of what’s coming next and more of what’s been left behind, especially given White’s indisputable figurehead status. Few would consider acts like the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather as bands that just happen to have Jack White in them, and fewer still would associate the White Stripes with Meg. Yet here Mr. White is, at age thirty-six, releasing an album that turns that iconic, rock-god-on-a-pedestal status on its head and in the process unshackles him emotionally in a way that has to be incredibly freeing and, for his audience, particularly engaging. Throughout White’s career arc, from his role in pushing garage rock back into the mainstream conversation to becoming one of rock’s most enduring purists to becoming the type of distinctive, singular personality that marks the transition from rebel to institution, he’s always sounded detached to me – I could always appreciate what White brought to the table, but it rarely spoke to me on an intimate level. Blunderbuss has no problems hitting a visceral note again and again: it’s his freest record, musically speaking, and in its bloodstained lyrics, which run the gamut from cautionary to vindictive to self-loathing, it opens up a side of White that previously has been impenetrable, wrapped up in his own self-mythologizing persona as he was.

There’s nothing opaque about opener “Missing Pieces,” which starts off with White realizing he has a nosebleed and wondering if he has a disease within the first few couplets and only gets worse from there. “I woke up and my hands were gone, yeah / I looked down and my legs were long gone / I fell forward with my shoulder, but there’s nobody there,” White howls, and if it’s a bit of an obvious metaphor for the loss of a relationship, then Blunderbuss is perhaps the most straightforward break-up record in recent memory. “Someone controls everything about you / and when they tell you that they just can’t live without you / they ain’t lyin’, they’ll take pieces of you,” White sings near the end of “Missing Pieces,” and it’s as good of a thesis for this record as any.

White is in full take-no-prisoners mode here: at one point he equates love to twisting a knife in his guts (“Love Interruption”); at another, he tells off a lover and leaves no room for an argument: “you broke your tongue talking trash, and now you try to bring your garbage to me / I got some words for your ass, you better find someone else off the street” (“Trash Tongue Talker”) – you can almost see the sneer on his face as he spits into the microphone. There’s the recent divorce from singer/model Karen Elson and the early retirement of Meg White, easy signposts to point to here, yet Blunderbuss is more universal than any of White’s personal problems. “No responsibility, no guilt or morals cloud her judgment,” White describes an unidentified female on “Freedom at 21,” and this is the warning that Blunderbuss so liberally dispenses – Beware the Siren, Beware the Heartbreaker. Yet wrapped up all of this is White’s own guilt: his headstrong, irrepressible desire; how he wants “love to walk right up and bite me” on “Love Interruption;” how he ends up “throwing up, a lifesaver down my throat” on “Sixteen Saltines.” White remains eternally complicit in his own angst. It’s the typical two sides of the coin, his unflinching look at his own romantic failures adding a fulfilling dimension to the warding off of the she-devil that White seems perpetually engaged in, and it’s one anyone whose had a relationship turn on them can sympathize with.

It’s an intimacy that is bolstered by Blunderbuss’ forays into R&B and boogie-woogie shuffling amid the usual touchstones of blues and classicist rock ‘n roll. A song like the playful, jaunty “Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy” rightfully sounds more like the product of his fellow Raconteur Brendan Benson, yet White sounds comfortably at home in the carnival-esque tinkling of the keys and the jostling bar room atmosphere the song conjures. In its thinly veiled lyrical takedown of Meg, it continues a theme of Blunderbuss in shifting moods and amorphous soundtracks, adding another emotional layer to a highly emotional album. While “Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy” is undoubtedly retaliatory, that festive mood those bouncy keys create cements the song as a celebration, not just mean-spirited revenge: “And you’ll be watching me girl, takin’ over the world,” White croons, defiantly getting in the last word. Other songs are more direct, like first single “Sixteen Saltines,” whose trashy stomp is perfect for the “lipstick, eyelash, broke mirror, broken home” characterization of its female antagonist. Through it all, White doesn’t waste a note, and his dexterity is something to marvel at.

That wonderfully halting lurch of a solo in “Weep Themselves to Sleep” – could it fit in any better with the song’s triumphantly ascending piano melody? Could the wistful titular track be placed anywhere other than where it is on the track listing, providing just the needed breather between the low boil of “Love Interruption” and the strong, major-key piano of “Hypocritical Kiss?” Could Jack White have released a record that so better encapsulates his diverse talents than Blunderbuss, one that deftly handles an archaic cover (“I’m Shakin’”) as easily as it does the schizophrenic nature of final track “Take Me With You When You Go”? That last track is a fitting end for the album – it starts off as a beseeching two-step, lightly accented with backing vocals and careful drum brushes before doing a 180 on its apology with an insistent riff and a bone-rattling guitar solo. It’s a nice little capsule review of what’s come before, uneasy and raw and slightly unhinged, and it’s just what White has always been: hard to pin down. That final refrain, though, where White begs “take me with you when you go, girl / take me anywhere you go,” is disarmingly forward and even has a touch of the hopelessly romantic, continuing the lyrical unveiling of the man behind the curtain. White has always stood for a certain ideal, a reminder of rock’s history and the careful construction of a persona that has always gone hand-in-glove with a proper Rock Star. On Blunderbuss, it’s as bewitchingly difficult as it’s always been to tell where White is going, but Jack White the person has never been as close to his audience as he is here.

Jack White – “Take Me With You When You Go”

See larger image Blunderbuss (Audio CD) List Price: $11.98 USD New From: $6.85 In Stock Used from: $8.29 In Stock Release date April 24, 2012.

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By Robin Smith, April 24, 2012 10:00 am

Maps & Atlases – Beware and Be Grateful

Barsuk 2012

Rating: 8/10

My whole experience of Maps & Atlases reads like an off-base rockumentary cliché, but anyway: I understand that Maps & Atlases are not the band they once were. This seems like an absolutely ridiculous statement to make of a band that has done little more to their sound than nuance it; the guitar tapping is still present, muffled under the song though it may be, and the experiments have just been restricted to compact boxes to move about in. The band hasn’t split itself down its side like it may seem, rather it’s just suppressed the big and the bold into the background to make room for (sure, go ahead and use the word) a “pop” song. It’s the toning down of it all, though, that makes it so criminal, and so when they nuance, they nuance hard. Maps & Atlases were once something of an imposing band, which means they were in your face and clever and they did these things to you; their second and most noted EP was aggressive and progressive, trying a whole lot at raucous speeds. Now, Maps & Atlases are a band able; namely, they are “danceable,” the band that sat around and listened to Prince a shit-tonne. Beyond the immaculate construction of their record, we do what we want with Maps & Atlases these days; the fans who claim they’ve given up on this band but for a live show are just as righteous fans as those of us who embrace this new band who made “Winter,” the band with supposedly funky choruses. Whatever the result is, I recognise the lame cliché on this one: it’s like listening to two different bands.

Cliché number two: that side of Maps & Atlases that died (by being quieter than usual) has made Maps & Atlases the band I was always hoping they would evolve into. There were moments on Perch Patchwork where a very bright light shone down: songs as showy as “Pigeon” suddenly sounded like warm home recordings, even in their cerebral nature; it felt like listening to a band making the greatest equation on how to party. Awful math rock jokes aside, there’s something of a super-group to be had of a Maps & Atlases who can make a visceral impact rather than just construct one. People have said you can dance to Beware and Be Grateful, which essentially means you can feel things as you listen to it; you can hear the patterns of the saddest moments, like Davison’s ‘I, I, I’ repeating as an endless transmission in “Remote and Dark Years.” Yes, it’s not something you need to read in a review, but Beware and Be Grateful is even more a warm, touching record than the ones made before it. As Davison loses it on the guitar-crackling “Old Ash” and lets his voice loudly preach and then crumble in a heap, a new vision of Maps & Atlases comes beaming out. It’s a passionate band standing on the top of all their wacky, wonderful architecture and caring profoundly about it.

These aren’t ferocious songs and they aren’t always playing with everything on the forefront, and it’s compelling to see that; the band has rounded up the edges of their songs and put them into the ground, so that “Fever” is as many times as complex as “Everyplace Is A House” but comes out as a song with a very conventional beauty to it: no guitar noodling, maybe, but so many little things going on within it that constitute bro-y complexity, just in a better way: so many guitar patterns and little programmed noises to be followed. Beware and Be Grateful is easy to dismiss as too easy, or not the band we once knew, but it feels to me like the band that finally found themselves saying what they want to say and in the way they want to. Which is why, chief among all clichés, I consider this somehow representative of the band as a whole, no matter how different it’s all gotten: a band showing off as a secondary objective, playing songs with immense warmth and love. We can speak of the impossibility of reconciling version one of this band to version two, but for me, Beware and Be Grateful is just a band growing. Growth, at its most disgustingly ordinary and clichéd. Heartfelt geniuses that these guys are, they sell it.

Maps & Atlases – “Silver Self”

See larger image Beware & Be Grateful (Audio CD) List Price: $13.99 USD New From: $9.02 In Stock Used from: $4.15 In Stock Release date April 17, 2012.

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By Rudy Klapper, April 23, 2012 10:00 am

Rough sledding the next couple weeks with finals (saying goodbye to my first year of law school can’t come soon enough), and a couple more reviews in the pipeline (and, hopefully, a Coachella overview). Australian buzz band the Jezabels have been on the verge of breaking through for the past year or so, with their debut LP Prisoner having been released on those shores this past September (and becoming one of my favorite albums of 2011), but it just got an American release at the beginning of April. It’s sweeping, anthemic indie rock, with shimmering guitars and stadium-worthy acoustics the order of the day (think Arcade Fire). But the standout is Hayley Mary, whose throaty vocals are the engine that keeps everything moving forward (think Florence Welch or Kate Bush).

The Jezabels – “Trycolour”

See larger image Prisoner (Audio CD) List Price: $12.98 USD New From: $7.09 In Stock Used from: $6.25 In Stock Release date April 3, 2012.

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By Rudy Klapper, April 19, 2012 10:00 am

Brendan Benson is releasing the digital version of his fifth studio album What Kind of World early, exclusively on his website: http://whatkindofworld.brendanbenson.com/shop. The album is now slated to drop April 21, his son’s second birthday. Benson is taking things into his own hands nowadays with his record label Readymade, and What Kind of World is defiantly Benson – power pop, with influences decades old and repurposed for a new audience, that eternally youthful voice keeping things steady. “Light of Day” is vintage Benson, with a nice double-guitar riff and the kind of sugary chorus Benson has made his trademark. If you dig it, check out first single “Bad for Me” for a slower, more lush angle.

*removed by label – check out http://brendanbenson.com/ to support the artist*

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By Rudy Klapper, April 18, 2012 10:00 am

The much anticipated debut solo album from prolific auteur Jack White (the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, the Dead Weather, countless production credits…you get the idea) is now streaming via the iTunes store. Blunderbuss, officially out April 24, is arguably as good as advertised; just the kind of diverse, genre-hopping rock music White has made his name in, with firm roots in the blues and his distinctive guitar playing. “Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy,” is a bit of an out-of-left-field surprise, all jangling pianos and one of the poppier melodies White has committed to record – in a way, it reminds me of the work of his partner in the Raconteurs, Brendan Benson (who has a new album coming out as well!).

Jack White – “Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy”

See larger image Blunderbuss (Audio CD) List Price: $11.98 USD New From: $6.85 In Stock Used from: $8.29 In Stock Release date April 24, 2012.

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By Rudy Klapper, April 12, 2012 10:00 am

Fresh off his success with the Drive soundtrack, producer Johnny Jewel recently released the Chromatics fourth studio album (proper U.S. release coming in May) on distinctive label Italians Do It Better, and Kill for Love maintains that nostalgic, ’80s vibe that dominated Drive and takes it to a new, M83-esque level (17 tracks that run for well over an hour). It’s a pretty incredible recreation of a certain time and sound, and similar to M83 last year, it reveres the past but creates something undeniably new and fresh with it. If you liked Drive or Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming or anything that comes out of Jewel’s mixing board, this is a must-have for 2012.

Chromatics – “The Page”

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By Rudy Klapper, April 10, 2012 10:00 am

Indie rock group Maps & Atlases will be releasing their second proper LP, Beware and Be Grateful next Tuesday (April 17th). The successor to 2010′s critically acclaimed Perch Patchwork, the album shows the band continuing their shift to a more pop-oriented sound, while still retaining the math-rock edge that had many music geeks salivating over the band’s potential. It’s evident in the highly accessible yet inventive “Remote and Dark Years,” where feverish drum work highlights an ever-shifting chorus; while still a band working towards an effective hook, their ability to really play their instruments helps them stand out in the indie crowd.

Maps & Atlases – “Remote and Dark Years”

See larger image Beware & Be Grateful (Audio CD) List Price: $13.99 USD New From: $9.02 In Stock Used from: $4.15 In Stock Release date April 17, 2012.

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By Rudy Klapper, April 3, 2012 10:00 am

Having recently toured with Manchester hype darlings WU LYF, it’s natural to compare Scottish rockers Holy Esque with that combustible group of howling degenerates. There’s Pat Hynes’ vocals, first and foremost, which recall WU LYF’s hoarse, on-the-verge-of-breaking style but with more finesse, more control – those who liked WU LYF will probably argue that primal snarling is what made that group so great, but I like Hynes’ balancing act more. And then there’s Holy Esque’s penchant for cerebral, guitar-oriented indie, the emphasis on echoing guitars and a blood-pumping anthemic quality. Their debut EP drops April 23 – look out for big things from this Glasgow group in the near future.

Holy Esque – “Rose”