Sep. 25, 2007 - Issue #623: Booked
New Sounds
Roger Dean Young and the Tin CupThreshold
Copperspine EDEN MUNRO / eden@vueweekly.com
A low note rumbles out of nothing, a distant gathering laughs and slow, sad horns swell up. This is the drifting atmosphere set forth in the opening minute of Threshold, the latest from Roger Dean Young and the Tin Cup. Young’s voice seems barely there as the band starts into the following track, “Keremeos,” but it’s not quiet—his voice is simply another instrument within the band. There’s a wall of sound, but it’s not without a chip here and there—an electric guitar that picks out a little melody only to finish with a strummed chord, or a ghostly voice that sweeps into and back out of the song—and these chips are the life of the music, keeping the heart beating by refusing to play with generic and stale country building blocks.
It may be Young’s name at the front, but the Tin Cup is no less a part of this album—the group is involved intimately with the music. It’s difficult to say what each single musician brings to the proceeding, but not because their contributions are minor. Rather, if the trumpet solo disappeared from “Two-Step,” or one of the twisting guitars was pulled from the title track, one would surely notice the hole left behind. The album is rife with instruments that each play a small part in a song, building upon one another to form the whole.
Roger Dean Young & the Tin Cup play Blue Chair Café on Wed, Oct 3.
Stars
In Our Bedroom After The War
Arts & Crafts
JOEL KELLY / joel@vueweekly.com
Who knew that hopeless romantics could also be wily entrepreneurs? In Our Bedroom After the War, the fourth full-length release from Montreal’s indie darlings Stars, was released online well in advance of its actual release date to circumvent the inevitable leaking that comes with an anticipated album.
Despite demonstrating its craftiness when it comes to matters of the wallet, the band hasn’t forgotten that its main talent resides in the matters of the heart. More wistful and mature than previous efforts, the record’s strengths lie in the diverging voices of singers Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan. While the interplay that makes the group’s style of melodramatic pop click is still there, the singers have allowed their distinct personalities to come through in their lyrics—Campbell’s theatrical fatalism contrasts just so with Millan’s sentimental melancholy to make In Our Bedroom After the War a continuation in a long line of great Stars albums.
The Wheat Pool
Township
Shameless
LEWIS KELLY / lewis@vueweekly.com
If Blue Rodeo, Neil Young and Elliott Smith all got together and somehow had a child, and that child cloned itself three times and formed a band, that band would probably sound something like The Wheat Pool. The Edmonton-based four-piece’s full-length debut, Township, is a melancholy, reflective collection of romantic songs steeped in Western Canadian culture. Also, it rocks.
Over 11 tracks The Wheat Pool showcases serious songwriting chops and a penchant for catchy, dark country. With tracks like “Neil Young” and “Whyte Avenue,” Township is a uniquely Edmontonian album, and an excellent one at that.
Brock Tyler
Unclosing
Independent
EDEN MUNRO / eden@vueweekly.com
Brock Tyler’s Unclosing is not for the fast and the furious crowd. The local songwriter has created an album that is dreamy, its head floating along in the clouds high above rather than tearing along the ground at street level. But, while Tyler’s voice is an ethereal creature that at times reaches toward a whispered falsetto without actually going the whole distance, the music keeps one foot firmly on the ground, with mandolins and banjos keeping it all from drifting off into incorporeal nothingness.
“Sparkle Street” is a fine example of the thoughtfulness that holds tightly onto this album, taking what could pass in mere moments of real time—walking along a sidewalk, getting in a car and heading home—and elongating it to the point that it feels like slow motion. The song itself doesn’t drag, though, shimmering as it sets the scene with little urge to hurry along. Unclosing is an album for reflection, best suited to a time when night has already fallen, a bottle of wine is at hand and there is no need for speed.
Japanther
Skuffed Up My Huffy
Menlo Park
BRYAN BIRTLES / bryan@vueweekly.com
Can you believe there are people in this world who still haven’t heard of this band? Japanther should be on the cover of every magazine and newspaper in the country, being heralded as the new Beatles. The band should be eating peeled grapes on a gigantic tour bus while getting fanned with palm fronds held by total babes. This shit is that good.
Still rocking their tape loops, bass drones and telephone receivers instead of microphones, on Skuffed Up My Huffy Japanther is getting a little less noisy than other releases which lets the melodies come to the forefront a bit more. Make no mistake though, my Nana’s not about to get into this anytime soon.
The best song in my opinion is “Challenge,” which is about the state of Japanther’s home borough of Brooklyn. With some hilarious samples to begin the track and the oft-repeated chorus of “challenge and opportunities ... challenge and opportunities” you can’t help but take the band’s smirking worldview.
The Cave Singers
Invitations Songs
Matador
ALEX KONYE / alex@vueweekly.com
Like label mates and musical genitors Yo La Tengo, The Cave Singers build up suspense in songs to the point where just when you think the group is going to rock out, it mellows on through, waves at you and smirks. All the mellow-dy in the world is there, and the rhythm is nice to nod along to, but where Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan fights his way to a falsetto, The Cave Singers’ Pete Quirk simply rasps a whine that grates against the music. He sounds like Neil Haggerty of Royal Trux, which suits a shaggy bluesy rock outfit more than the intense quietude of these inviting songs.
Coco
Play Drums + Bass
K
ALEX KONYE / alex@vueweekly.com
Maybe, just on the outside chance it was something uncharted on the sea of the “Amen Break,” you could give it a listen, but whoa, would you be sorely mistaken; it’s just some guy hunched over a drum kit and a girl boinging on the bass. Yep. It’s drum and bass alright. But it’s so unbelievably for its own sake, so masturbatory, that you should avoid it like both bad meat and meat that’s been masturbated with. It’s raw, but not Iggy and the Stooges sashimi raw. It’s more like 14-day-old, big fat turkey cutlet, served with rancid arugula.
Seriously, it’s not worth buying; you can do this yourself. Here’s how: take a stick and bang it on a two litre bottle of coke to a four count, then take any comb and pluck any tooth over and over while holding it up to mic with lots of fuzz and drive. Bingo! You’ve got your drum and your bass. Sing some words about emotional suicide with a dry sophomoric affectation and the illusion is complete.
Why don’t the Twin Fangs have a serious indie deal? DIY and kickin’ ass are dead.
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