Bonus Album Reviews
!!!
Shake the Shudder (WARP)
New York City’s !!! claim their many years on the road have made them older and wiser. But older and wiser doesn’t always mean better. The promising groove oriented post-punk that !!! honed over the last six records and 10 years has transformed from dance-punk to dance-funk. And on the band’s latest release, Shake the Shudder , from dance-funk to dance-junk.
Armed with a respected array of influences and an encouraging back catalog, expectations were high for Shake the Shudder. But being armed with the proper tools and using them effectively are mutually exclusive. The best tracks feature a bouncy mix of funky rhythms and soulful vocals that sometimes approach the slick post-disco rock of Speaking In Tongues -era Talking Heads, but never quite reach that peak.
Elsewhere the band sidesteps this trend a bit and wades into the electro R&B waters and even tries rap-style vocals over a paisley electro-funk framework. Held together by groovy basslines and rhythmic atmospheric percussion, the tracks play out like a modern day Deee-Lite.
Something seems to have gone awry for a band professing to practice Hansei, the Japanese philosophy of acknowledging one’s mistake and pledging improvement. Shake the Shudder is less of an improvement and more of a decline. But while there is nothing really special about it, there is nothing really that bad either, it’s just disappointing. (www.chkchkchk.net)
By Matt the Raven
Agent Blå
Agent Blue (KANINE)
Sounding like a mix of Joy Division and Cocteau Twins on speed, these Swedish rockers tread a path between shoegaze and post-punk. Acid-pop guitar squalls and fuzzy guitar swirls drenched in reverb fit nicely with the rapid fire drumming. Smoky female vocals provide some primitive emotional punch. (www.agentbla.bandcamp.com)
By Matt the Raven
Amber Arcades
Cannonball EP (HEAVENLY)
It’s usually a bad sign when the best song on your new EP is a cover tune. And it’s even worse if that song is the opening track. But Amber Arcades’ version of Nick Drake’s “Which Will” fits so well within their archetypical dream twee sound that there is no drop off with the four tracks that follow.
In fact the next two tracks, “It Changes” and “Wouldn’t Even Know,” are just as upbeat with a multi-layered and textural edge to them. Mixing some nice atmospheric guitar swirls, and just enough grit and grime, to the pop melodies make them appealing to both the indie and pop worlds.
Rounding out the EP are two slow burners. “Can’t Say That I Tried” and “Cannonball” continue the shimmering excursion with a languid dreaminess, allowing Annelotte de Graaf’s wistful and airy vocals to take center stage.
The Cannonball EP builds on the reverbcoated rock lullabies from Amber Arcades’ 2016 debut album Fading Lines and is an amiable, if not innovative, EP of jaunty and jangly atmospheric dream-pop. (www.amberarcades.net)
By Matt the Raven
Nicole Atkins
Goodnight Rhonda Lee (SINGLE LOCK)
It’s worth buying Goodnight Rhonda Lee just for first single, “A Little Crazy.” This lush Roy Orbison-esque lament (co-written with Chris Isaak) is one of the best ’60s pop ballads released since the ’60s. Its beautiful orchestral arrangement is the perfect soft majestic wonderland for her powerhouse of a voice to soar through. And luckily the record has so much more to offer. A little bit country, a whole lotta soul, from the dirty stomp of “Brokedown Luck” to the breezy pop of “Sleepwalking,” a good deal of Goodnight Rhonda Lee would’ve been at home on ’70s pop radio (see especially the Carole King-like “Colors” and the lovely lesson-to-be-had-in-the-lyrics “Listen Up”). The title track brings into focus the theme of the album—the laying to rest of Atkins’ mischievous alter ego—and “Goodnight Rhonda Lee” is a definite highlight, a slice of country-tinged pop that instantly has you smiling and nodding along. (www.nicoleatkins.com)
By Aug Stone
Dan Auerbach
Waiting on a Song (EASY EYE SOUND)
Blues obsession notwithstanding, Dan Auerbach has always been a pop songwriter. For every Skip James trick featured in the Black Keys songbook, there have been five more courtesy of Roy Orbison or Ray Davies (see: the cover of The Kinks’ “Act Nice and Gentle” on Rubber Factory ). So it made sense—and was actually a damn good idea, in fact—for Auerbach to embrace the pop factor on Waiting on a Song , which is technically his second solo album (following the surprisingly durable Keep It Hid from 2009), but unlike anything he’s made before.
Ornate and sunny, the album is a love letter to ’60s R&B and ’70s soft rock, with lushly arranged strings peppering the songs, none of which are longer than four minutes—and, truthfully, none of which would sound out of place in an Urban Outfitters following a Leon Bridges power hour. Unpredictably, folk legend John Prine contributes to some of the songwriting here (notably the album’s stellar title track), and at one point Mark Knopfler shows up to play guitar (on the borderline-corny sing-along “Shine on Me”), but this is still Auerbach’s project through and through, which means that there are hooks flying left and right—and more frequently than not they land, too. Tracks like “King of a One Horse Town” and “Undertow” are irresistible—pure pop comfort food—but once the bubble bursts, you wish there was more to chew on. (www.facebook.com/danauerbachmusic)
By Nate Rogers
Beach Fossils
Somersault (BAYONET)
The third studio album from New York dreamy rockers Beach Fossils stops to a near-standstill half-way through its fifth track, “Rise,” where Memphis rapper Cities Aviv leads a saxophone-induced slow dance. It’s a moment of deft self-reflection on a record where, four years since their previous album, the members of Beach Fossils are still working out how to sound sure of themselves.
If you swapped lead singer Dustin Payseur’s vocals out for Mac DeMarco’s, little would sound out of place—both Demarco and Beach Fossils started out on the same Brooklyn label Captured Tracks, after all. “Sugar” holds much the same blurry-eyed sonic sentiment as DeMarco’s “My Old Man.” The lo-fi dream rock state of both artists’ output, alongside original 2008 label mates DIIV and Wild Nothing, remains.
Payseur’s lyrics are still stereotypically and undeniably “indie”—“Couldn’t really tell you/ What I’m trying to find/Everyone’s so boring/ Makes me want to lose my mind,” he sings on “Down the Line.” But the 31-year-old, who is now joined by bassist Jack Doyle Smith and guitarist Tommy Davidson, has made sure to distil some surprises in Somersault which attempts to keeps it tripping on further away from 2013’s Clash the Truth .
Somersault is still every bit a record of shimmering guitars: it’s a feature on which this scene relies. More experimental additions don’t always come off, too often waning on unnecessary-sounding. The harpsichord-heavy “Closer Everywhere” is striking, if lamentably jarring. The first time we hear a jazzy flute solo on “Saint Ivy,” it feels a fun choice in amongst the string-heavy plodding melody, but by the second, on “Social Jetlag,” it feels like a trope overused.
Beach Fossils are best when they stick with what they know, which is why tracks such as “May 1st” and “Be Nothing,” with their spangly guitar lines and easygoing lilt,
