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The Shins will be releasing their first single off their upcoming album Port of Morrow next week (on Valentine’s Day no less. That’s cute James) on a 7″ – you can already check out that single here . James Mercer and company, meanwhile, just released the B-side to that single yesterday, and it’s a lovely, slower tune that, along with “Simple Song,” is really amping up expectations for Port of Morrow. Check out the video below.
It’s been almost five years since the Shins released an album (the superb Wincing the Night Away - one of the first records I ever reviewed), and the wait is almost over. Not only are they playing at Coachella 2012 (whose lineup has to be seen to be believed ), but their new album Port of Morrow is slated for a March release. “Simple Song” is the first taste off of it, and it’s vintage Shins – James Mercer’s time in Broken Bells doesn’t seem to have dulled his indie pop chops at all. 2012 is looking to be a good one…
Supergroups more often than not leave me feeling like the disconsolate patsy on the cover of this album, the lifeless hope of what could have been lying facedown in the dirt while I weep tears of disappointment because of it. This is a bit dramatic, but isn’t that what supergroups promise? Drama, bigger, better things, the logical conclusion that follows from the infallible mathematical equation that if you add great things together you get something greater. Of course, it rarely works out that way, so generally you won’t see me actually crying into my arm when Kanye and Jay-Z’s last album isn’t the best thing since, uh, Kanye’s last album. It doesn’t help when musicians tag their new projects with utterly meaningless descriptions like “doom-wop” that guarantee I will look at it and cringe. The problem with Nick Thorburn née Diamonds of the Unicorns and more recently Islands is that the man just doesn’t care. Off-kilter indie, Neil Young-flavored folk, goofy hip-hop – Thorburn has slept with them all, and the results have not always been pretty. Thorburn’s dipped his stick into so many cans that his own identity and talents have become tawdry tricks, unfocused and haphazard.
It’s no surprise then to realize that Mister Heavenly succeeds because it adds that crucial element that Thorburn has previously lacked: an equal creative force to bounce off of. Ryan Kattner, the ivory-pounding face of experimental rock outfit Man Man, is probably one of the few musicians in indie who could stand up to Thorburn’s particular shade of weird, and he’s not just some piano in the background. Kattner is what gives Out Of Love its flair, a distinct character that could very well make Mister Heavenly more of a regular concern. His rugged howl is the perfect counterpoint to Thorburn’s nasally whine, the kind of oil and vinegar pairing that gives much of Out Of Love its bite. Musically the two are right in sync; Kattner’s piano playing is much more reserved than his work in Man Man, with an emphasis on pounded chords and a two-step, barroom beat, while Thorburn’s warm guitar tones take inspiration from classic surf melodies and Kattner’s own vocal inflections.
For a project ostensibly looking to the past for inspiration, it’s amazing how original these songs sound. Short and simple, Out Of Love has the requisite “doo-wahs” and forlorn lyrics about (what else?) love and heartbreak, and the key to every tune is a dyed-in-the-wool pop melody. But the difference is in Kattner’s unusually dark lyrics, words belied by his relentlessly chipper vocal delivery, in the sparkling production that makes every electric guitar lick shine and the keys sing, in drummer Joe Plummer’s superb drumming and the sturdy backbone it provides. Plummer, who’s already working overtime as a member of the Shins and Modest Mouse, brings the kind of solid rhythm work that would go unnoticed if it wasn’t for the endless variety he brings, from the complicated backbeat to “Pineapple Girl” to the thunderous stomp on “Bronx Sniper.” Combine that with Thorburn and Kattner’s chameleonic styles and you’re left with a record where the listener never really knows what’s coming next. The best part? You can’t wait to find out.
Where Out Of Love rises from mere pastiche to a genuinely well-crafted statement is in the songwriting. ‘50s-style vocal harmonies set to the true story of the pen-pal relationship between Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and a ten-year-old American girl, with Thorburn and Kattner trading off playful verses, is just the right kind of weird that makes Out Of Love so gratifying. “Bronx Sniper” sounds like a more aggressive version of Spoon, but when Kattner roars in with a serrated howl after Thorburn intones “no one gets out of here alive” and Plummer bangs the living shit out of his set, it’s a catharsis so pure it doesn’t need any fancy made-up genre descriptions other than fucking rock ‘n roll. That’s not even mentioning the old school AM-radio replications like the jazzy, anthemic “Charlyne” and the note-perfect Brill Building pop of “Diddy Eyes,” songs that sound timeless and thoroughly evocative without being lifeless clones.
And then Mister Heavenly goes out on their inaugural tour with fucking Michael Cera on bass. It’s hard to say with a stunt like that whether Mister Heavenly is going to remain more than just Nick Thorburn’s passing fancy, but Out Of Love has more than enough juice for a sequel. Just enough with the gimmicks already.
“Supergroup” might be a bit of a misnomer, but Mister Heavenly does have an impressive pedigree – Nick Diamonds (Islands, the Unicorns), Joe Plummer (Modest Mouse, the Shins) and Honus Honus (Man Man) teaming up to lay down an album of what they call “doom wop” sounds pretty cool. And unlike so many vanity projects, Mister Heavenly actually works, a fascinating twisting of indie rock into R&B-inflected pop shades. Out of Love was released this past August – check it out ASAP
Mister Heavenly – “Bronx Sniper”
What made Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin’s debut album Broom such a delight was its simple charm and beautifully unassuming melodies. Sure, it was home-recorded in a pointedly lo-fi manner and slightly derivative of bands like the Shins and early Apples in Stereo, but there was something inspiring about these three Missouri kids pulling off some truly gorgeous indie pop with a miniscule budget. It meant the songs had to be good, not fluffed up with studio tricks, and they were. The songs on Pershing were just as solid, no doubt, but a more confident SSLYBY began to lose some of that production innocence and amateur sensibility that colored their debut, seeming instead to be searching desperately for that hit single to put them over the top. Now we finally have The Indie Band Making Good – Death Cab’s Chris Walla behind the boards, a honest-to-God studio to play with, and a summer release date, the perfect time to listen to a band as breezy and lighthearted as SSLYBY generally sound. Unfortunately, what they end up with sounds more like contemporary Weezer than something you might find at the back of your local discount record store, something that was perhaps not groundbreaking but definitely yours.
Too often here SSLYBY sound like someone else’s band, or maybe Chris Walla’s wind-up power-pop toy. Of course, everything sounds good – each song here could be a potential hit single for the band or any other songwriter, and with Walla’s beefed-up production sharpening every cymbal hit and making the guitar chords more pleasant and audible than ever before, it’s a fundamentally flawless indie pop record. It’s just so unexpectedly generic; from the faux-anthem “Banned (By The Man)” to the cringe-inducing lyrics of “In Pairs” to the by the numbers designated single “Sink/Let It Sway,” nothing here leaves much of an imprint. Agreeably shiny guitars? Check. Soothing vocal harmonies? Check. Handclaps? Check. It’s inoffensive, sometimes fuzzy, other times crisp guitar pop, tunes that are a dime a dozen on any college radio station. Those who haven’t heard the band before will find everything agreeable enough, if a little indistinctive – what was the fuss all about, anyways? Then again, only the lovely, acoustic ballad “Stuart Gets Lost Dans Le Métro” takes a page from the Broom handbook, right down to the opaque name, hushed vocals and delicate melody.
If it wasn’t for that sole offering, Let It Sway might seem the work of an entirely different band, one content to offer up bland sing-a-longs like “All Hail Dracula!” and the truly bad one-two combo of “Animalkind” and “Phantomwise,” songs that lack even a modicum of the above average catchiness that keeps the rest of the record afloat. Occasionally SSLYBY will recapture the magic solely on the strength of their not inconsiderable songwriting chops – “Everlyn” is one of the group’s best love pleas ever (the completely surprising guitar solo is a plus), and bookends “Back in the Saddle” and “Made To Last” are two of the strongest tracks on the record, particularly the latter’s wistful tone, so appropriate as the brightest days of summer begin to fade. It’s a shame, because as SSLYBY have continued to expand their sound the genre that they were a few years late to has already grown past them. James Mercer is off doing things with Danger Mouse; Ben Kweller was indulging in alt-country last go-around; most of the Elephant 6 bands are either off getting freaky with themselves (Of Montreal) or spacing out (Apples in Stereo). If the band doesn’t start catching up to their peers, they’re going to end up a lot more like their misbegotten namesake than they would probably prefer.
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin – “Everlyn”
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Following a hype train can be a dangerous thing. Follow the right one and you can end up discovering something new and revitalizing, like a Surfer Blood or a Tallest Man on Earth. Follow the wrong one and you could spend hours convincing yourself to like the newest Black Kids CD because, well, dozens of bloggers can’t be wrong! When precocious Long Beach young ‘uns Avi Buffalo released their anticipated debut earlier this year, they had all the prerequisites for their own hype machine: hot single(s), Pitchfork approval, a fairly surprising rating on Metacritic (82!). I listened to one song, judged them as an early Shins knock-off and promptly forgot about them. That’s the problem with hype – too much of it and you go into the listen expecting something utterly mind-blowing, something that will live up to an almost mythic status all this blogosphere talk builds up yet rarely matches. Avi Buffalo is not mind-blowing, nor is it even one of the best debuts I’ve heard this year. Simply put, it’s great, solid indie-pop music, music that merely portends the arrival of a band that has more potential than most their age and some pretty slick songwriting chops.
I really wanted to give this a higher rating, particularly after hearing gems like opener “Truth Sets In” or “Coaxed,” songs that replicate the gentle flow of (yes) early Shins or debut-album Noah and the Whale. It’s twee without being overly cute, something hard to do when your band is besieged everywhere they go by the constant addendum “but they’re only 19!!!” Excellently-named vocalist Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg sounds just like a dozen other indie-pop vocalists, having mastered the art of the high-pitched, fragile whisper and the occasional faux falsetto, but it’s the songwriting that elevates Avi Buffalo from the also-rans. “What’s In It For?” is a fantastic pop single, marrying a beautiful melody to a stick-in-your-head hook and the kind of instant accessibility that future MTV-show soundtracks are made of. That’s not a knock on the band’s obvious penchant for writing songs everyone is interested in nowadays, but a testament to how well the songs click. It helps that Isenberg is actually quite the guitar player, making the unexpected fretwork on tunes like “Jessica” and “Remember Last Time” the highlights rather than the strong pop foundations the songs are built on. Even when the solos go on a bit too long, as they do most egregiously on the 7-and-a-half-minute “Remember Last Time,” Isenberg’s jangly guitar work is pleasant enough to forgive the youthful wankery.
But then there’s songs like the lackluster “Can’t I Know” or the way too much of the latter half of the album bleeds together, something that can’t really be avoided when Avi Buffalo stick strictly to their inoffensive guitar-pop formula throughout. While “Where’s Your Dirty Mind” and “One Last” are good songs in their own right, it’s obvious that Avi Buffalo is a front-loaded record, with the best melodies ending with “Summer Cum.” That last is another divisive issue with the band, being the clearest example of Isenberg’s juvenile lyrical bent. But hey, he’s young, and although in the future he might try a more diplomatic approach to describing adolescent love, it’s nonetheless impressive that Isenberg can turn sheet stains into one of the sweeter love songs of the year. Avi Buffalo wear their musical influences on their sleeves (Built To Spill, the aforementioned Shins, Elephant 6, etc. etc.), and their lyrical direction is more Superbad than J.D. Salinger, but it’s charming without being cloying, poppy without being overly sugary. Most importantly, it’s the kind of debut that leaves you thrilled for what the future may bring, and that’s something special.
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“Will you be the bed for me when they set the world on fire / just to see it burn?” frontman Zach Schwartz asks on “Solitary Gun,” the opening song off Rogue Wave’s deliciously bouncy new record Permalight. For a band that has been through some of the hells Rogue Wave have suffered over the past few years, including the death of a former bandmate and one member’s struggle with kidney failure, “Solitary Gun” is an unexpected shot in the arm, a booster of unbridled joy and money hooks that belie the song’s apocalyptic images. Indeed, “Solitary Gun” is a most unlikely anthem, one that sets the tone for the rest of Permalight as a bright, buoyant beacon of hope.
Viewed through the context of the band’s three-year hiatus and the tragedies the members’ themselves have suffered, one would be forgiven for thinking that Permalight would be a dirge of a record, one mired in weepy indie pop and bent on exorcising the ghosts of its past. But while it does exorcise those ghosts, it does it in the most defiant way possible, through bubbling synths and lyrics about love machines like on the obscenely catchy “Good Morning (The Future),” or via quietly surging lullabies like the beautifully glacial “Sleepwalker.” Gone are the dreamy guitar-pop of their past and the constant Shins references – Rogue Wave have embraced electro to buff up their strikingly powerful guitar hooks, and rather than lose themselves in a fad they assimilate it flawlessly, as one listen to single “Good Morning (The Future)” quickly proves.
That’s not to say that the folksy heart of Schwartz’s songwriting has been subverted by mindless hooks; rather, the electronic additions to songs like the gently swelling “Fear Itself” and the jittery hooks of “Stars and Stripes” inject a whole new kind of life into the proceedings. But at the heart of it all is Schwartz’s relentlessly heartening songwriting, which floats from effortless pop-rock to whispery ballads with the same ease and, more importantly, the same strength, both lyrically and musically. It’s the way the gutsy bass line and ragged guitar slowly build to a hammering chorus on “Right With You,” the way “I’ll Never Leave You” somehow turns one of the more clichéd sentiments in rock ‘n roll into a heartrending promise with just a shaker, handclaps, and some beautiful harmonies, the way that every song here just seems overwhelmed with joy. It’s hard to describe the perfect hook with words, but suffice it to say that nearly every song here has that sublime ability to punch one right in the aural stomach, the place directly attached to your foot-tapping and singing-in-the-shower nerves.
This isn’t a perfect record, as made evident by the annoyingly repetitive title track or the way things sort of tail off by the last two songs, but it’s leagues ahead of your average indie pop album, and it’s certainly Rogue Wave’s best effort yet. Their ability to turn what would have wrecked many bands into an unfettered success is Permalight’s biggest triumph, and the listening experience is just as enticing a treat for the listener. More than anything else, though, Permalight stands out as a life-affirming testament to the human spirit, a collection of songs that come off as just so incredibly happy, so goddamn upbeat, that it’s impossible not to fall in love with it, with everything.
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Fruit Bats – The Ruminant Band
Over the course of a decade, Eric Johnson has lead the Fruit Bats through musical terrain both poppy and experimental, mixing Americana folk with bubbly indie, alt-country with melodic chamber-pop. With their fourth release, The Ruminant Band, Johnson & Co. continue to live up to their reputation as musical blacksmiths and the title itself. A ruminant is a mammal with four stomachs, giving it the ability to digest and re-digest food to extract the maximum amount of nutrients from a single bite, and with The Ruminant Band, the Fruit Bats have again created a record of many disparate angles, Johnson’s viewpoint on the past forty years of music chewed and re-chewed into a distinctly Fruit Bats release.
Johnson has always been a hard talent to pin down, but his penchant for combining many different styles into a seamless whole remains intact. It’s been four years since the Fruit Bats’ last, but those four years (four stomachs, anyone?), which have had Johnson become a member of the Shins and the Fruit Bats fall by the wayside, seem to have only ignited Johnson’s creativity further. The Ruminant Band runs the gamut from classic rock ‘n roll in the Neil Young vein to light summer pop reminiscent of Elephant 6 groups, and while nothing here is mind-blowingly original or particularly revolutionary, it is a fresh, solid collection of intimate alternative.
Opener “Primitive Man” stomps along a ‘70s rock groove and a completely unfettered solo, while guitars ring and twang like the Allman Brothers on the titular track and the country-fried, fuzzed-out “My Unusual Friend.” Johnson’s vocals, which call to mind a nasally mix between the Minus 5’s Scott McCaughey and Kevin Barnes with a more country bent, stay in a higher register for most of the time here. His rather twee, always emotive pipes make a hokey chorus like “I’ll never snow on your parade / I’ll never bring a cloudy day” on the excellent “Tegucigalpa” an earnest promise rather than a corny sentiment, and stand in perfect contrast to the rugged, full-bodied instrumentation on display throughout.
The album peaks in the middle, beginning with the wistful acoustic strummer “Beautiful Morning Light,” which would have sounded perfectly at home on Fleet Foxes’ debut. “The Hobo Girl” and “Being On Our Own” are the record’s highlight, the first rollicking along a honky-tonk piano melody and a campfire sing-a-long chorus, while the latter is a jaunty pedal-steel exercise with a syncopated barroom piano backbeat.
The Ruminant Band is a collection that could be looked at closely, noting the intricate licks and gospel shading of “Feather Bed,” the soft carnival synthesizers on closer shuffling closer “Flamingo,” or the way Johnson’s vocals occasionally bend towards the darker in lyrics like those on “Singing Joy To The World.” But it’s best looked at as a summer album, one that rides along an open, instinctively American highway into a future uncertain, but one defiantly promising and undoubtedly optimistic. In its celebration of music past and present, from the rangy guitars and pounding, Fleetwood Mac-esque piano riffs to Johnson’s undeniable modern pop sensibilities and jangly, sun-soaked melodicism, The Ruminant Band is a record that without a doubt recycles, but makes sure to waste nothing in doing so.
The Shins – Wincing The Night Away
It’s been a good run for the Shins so far, a band that languished in typical indie-pop obscurity for seven years before exploding into popularity with their second album, Chutes Too Narrow (over 393,000 copies sold) and a Grammy nomination (for “Best Recording Package,” true, but they take what they can get). Indeed, things were going good for New Mexico’s prodigal sons.
Rather than give us another copy of Chutes Too Narrow, the album that, along with everyone’s favorite indie-romantic torch film Garden State, propelled the band into the limelight, the Shins present us with an album that at times retains the familiar sound listeners have come to associate with the band and at others stretches their sonic imaginations. Wincing the Night Away attempts to strike a fine balance between experimentation and ‘60s pop homage, but only halfway fails.
Lead song “Sleeping Lessons,” a look at Mercer’s chronic insomnia, starts off as most Shins do, quietly and building up a sense of tension. However, where Chutes Too Narrow’s “Kissing the Lipless” burst into a sugary electric burst within seconds, the synthesizer and gentle acoustic guitar strums on “Sleeping Lessons” go on for about two and a half minutes until exploding into a typical Shins song, all bouncing drums and Mercer’s near falsetto illuminating the way.
Listeners are once again reminded of the Shins’ new music ideas with “Sea Legs,” not only the longest track of the album at five and a half minutes but also one that radically reinvents what can be called a Shins song. The song is built around a funky bass riff and a drum machine (!), along with strings and synthesizer effects.
While the song is at first relatively catchy and a novel sound for the band, it soon become repetitive and the typically obtuse lyrics turn grating, with Mercer singing non sequiturs like “when the dead moon rises again / we’ve no time to start a protocol.” The song ends anti-climatically with a boring synthesized trip-hop jam.
Wincing the Night Away is also fairly top-heavy. The second half tends to blur together, with songs that sound either too stereotypical Shins (“Girl Sailor”) and leave no lasting mark, or are too self-consciously experimental. The most obvious is “Split Needles,” which suffers from an annoying synthesizer line and drums mixed way too loudly.
That being said, there are some fine efforts at creating a new sound on Wincing the Night Away, as well as some entertaining examples of the patented Shins “sound” that make for some of their best songs.
“Red Rabbit” is the band’s most successful foray into the experimental side of pop music, holding Mercer’s strong vocals on a foundation of kitchen-sink sounds that sound like they were taken from an old-school Super Mario soundtrack. A melody from what sounds like an underwater piano accents Mercer’s unusually dark lyrics, later accompanied by simple acoustic chords and mimicked applause.
The album’s first single, “Phantom Limb,” is pop bliss, catchy and refreshing. A simple drum-and-tambourine beat anchor the song, built mostly around Mercer’s enchanting vocals and a series of guitar licks, until the song climaxes at the chorus into a harmonized choir of voices.
The best song on the album might also be the best one the Shins have ever recorded. “Australia” begins with a series of “la-la-la’s,” chiming guitar, and a cheery drumbeat before Mercer’s multi-tracked vocals erupt into what may be the quintessential Shins pop tune.
The song is a fusion of all of the Shins’ most obvious influences and the band meld these influences into its own creation seamlessly. Much of the credit goes to Mercer, whose singing here is some of the strongest on the album. The lyrics are at first depressing but morph into optimism, with Mercer singing “so give me your hand / and let’s jump out of the window” at the song’s ending.
All things considered, Wincing the Night Away is a bold step for a band many had come to think of as a one-trick pony. While a few of the songs are musically uninspiring and lacking a sense of direction, many show a heartening change of course that hopefully will be carried over to the next album. Songs like “Phantom Limb” and “Australia,” meanwhile, prove that the Shins can still rock like it is 1968 and sound cool while doing it.
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