Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem: Violets Are Blue

Strutting Americana

If Violets Are Blue seems like an album that you can walk to, well, there’s a reason for that. Rani Arbo wound up writing many of these songs while out on a stroll. Now, that’s something to commend: I have trouble walking and chewing bubblegum at the same time (well, not really), and to have a song in your head while out without a pen and a piece of paper to write it down seems like a daunting task. But Arbo has done it, and the fruition of all that moving – which is good for you – is this fifth album from the band, out on Signature Sounds, which is, bar none, one of my favourite record labels, insofar as quality Americana goes. However, there’s another thing that’s significant out this release. While the album certainly is no Summerteeth, this one sees the group using the studio as more of an instrument. It’s hard to really hear this, because there’s no outright experimentation, and, if anything, Violets Are Blue is an album about pauses and expectations. You listen to a song such as “You Should See Me Now” and it seems … simply simple. Just a mandolin, an acoustic guitar and vocals, along with harmonies – that’s all there is to it, at least for the first 100 seconds. And then Arbo’s fiddle comes in. Still, these songs, many of them, feel sparse and Spartan. Hardly the product of studio tinkering, and more of a product of the wide open spaces that I’d like to imagine Arbo and company enjoying on a nice, breezy spring day.

The spaciousness is something of an interesting point, as this is an album that doesn’t seem stuffed to the gills with virtuosity. However, at the same time, as confident and muscular this group appears to be, Violets Are Blue has a quality of something being held back. That’s either an asset or liability, depending on what you like in country music. If anything, Violets Are Blue, despite taking its title from one of the oldest lines in the book, is not syrupy music. These are almost anti-love songs, except that they’re not against love. “It’s not that I don’t love you / It’s that I’m in love with your whole kind,” goes a lyric on “Swing Me Down”. The album opens up with “I got a drummer man beating his drum / Shouting I love you to everyone.” So Violets Are Blue is not about the love of an individual – no boy meets girl style ditties here – it’s about the love of the whole. That seems to me to be a different kind of love, perhaps a non-romantic love, a love for all of (wo)mankind. So that’s a unique take on the whole notion, putting a distinctive and different spin on things. “I love this city / I love her all my life,” goes yet another line about New Orleans. So love, in Arbo and company’s world view, is something that’s shared with all of humanity and even its constructions. That’s interesting and fresh to say the least. Obviously, it’s something I’m still wrapping my mind around, and maybe it’s just me and my personality, because I feel that I’m on the verge of repeating myself.

More after this photograph of the band:

While the band certainly knows how to sound remotely alt-countrish (see “Down By the Water”), this is pleasant and easy-going Americana that may verge into folk and even jazzy territory. The aforementioned “I Love This City” has a Norah Jones vibe going for it, which, again, is going to be a matter of personal taste when it comes to liking it or not. Songs such as “Over and Over” verge into Bruce Cockburn territory with a bluesy swing to it, which, again, may or may not be your cup of tea. (I like the pop Cockburn, stuff like “Lovers in a Dangerous Time”.) However, if you think that things might get a little pedestrian or middle-of-the-road, there comes a tune such as “I’m Satisfied With You”, which is downright jazzy, even if it is jazz lite, bringing to mind swing music standards. If that says anything, Violets Are Blue is certainly, well, varied. It isn’t boring. But it does feel more of a collection of songs as opposed to an album. Still, you cannot help but marvel at the thematic of love as being a universal emotion, which, in this day of terror and mass killings, is something that more people need to hear. “There’s a place of deep forgiveness,” goes another line, but “there’s a place of deep distrust” as well. For 2015, that idea stretches beyond the simple love between two people and could say something about the state of the union as a whole.

So that all leads me to conclude that there’s something serious going on with the simple sounding, both in title and the actual sound of the album, Violets Are Blue. This is not mere sophomoric love poetry, there’s something deeper and fuller going on. Still, there’s that niggling feeling that the group is being too restrained, as though there’s a sense of being unsure of what music they’re making. This isn’t quite as full and robust as I’d like. There’s a lack, a hole in the centre of the record (and I’m not talking in literal terms here). Still, even if this might not be quite what you’re expecting – Signature Sounds bands have a habit of sounding buoyant and full and uplifting, the kind of stuff you want to go “Yeehaw!” and throw a party to, for the most part – it is still something worth considering. There are layers, and I have to admit there’s a nice song here or there. My favourite would probably be “Walk Around the Wheel”, if not because it’s a strut of a song, then because it mentions cats. (Dot, my furry feline companion, would approve, except that I think she’s snoozing in the bedroom somewhere, waiting for her master – or is the master of me? – to come and join her.) There’s a nice quality to this disc, file under easy listening, and those who like their Americana to go down soothing will think that this is the bee’s knees. Looking for something to take a stroll to while you go about on your neighbourhood sojourn? Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem have made just that album. For you. For everyone.

Rating: 6 outta 10

Album: Violets Are Blue
Artist: Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem
Label: Signature Sounds
North American Release Date: 2015-03-31
UK Release Date: 2015-04-20

Psycroptic: Psycroptic

Psycho Circus

So I’m a little late for Metal Mondays. Forgive me. I have a backlog of stuff I wanna get to, and that includes a smattering of metal. And, as proof that I have an embarrassment of riches as a blogger, I have four metal albums that release on April 7, so next Monday could be a very metal dinner for you readers. (I’m considering running a poll as to which album you’d really love to see me tackle for next Monday. It’s a nice problem to have.) So, even though I’m late by a day – if not a few weeks – to this one, it’s a good one. Psycroptic is a technical death metal band that hails from Tasmania (home of the devil … the Tasmanian Devil!) in Australia. These guys are, thus, from the lonely island on the lonely continent that is also an island, technically speaking. (Then again, I guess every continent is an island if you really think about it as we’re all surrounded by water.) Even though I’m still a metal newbie, I’m finding myself gravitating towards death metal more and more. (No worries, readers, I have no reason to slit my wrists or anything these days.) There’s something about the thrashiness of the music, the guttural, barked vocals, the technical musicianship on display. These things all deliver for me, and, in that sense, Psycroptic are no different. I can say one thing about metal: it is a rare day when I get a metal album that outright sucks, and those tend to be the more mainstream releases in my mind. There’s something about the metal underground community that seems to breed a friendly (or not so friendly, I dunno) game of one-upmanship that it almost doesn’t matter what album you get. Chances are it’s gonna be good. If not great.

Psycroptic’s sixth and self-titled full-length is no different. Full of bone crushing riffage played at flashy speeds and drums that are played at a tempo that any speed demon would have trouble keeping up with, Psycroptic is a fairly outstanding release. Sure, some of it sounds alike – which I suppose is a criticism that you can lob at all metal – but these guys bring the noise across nine songs. Psycroptic is arresting and, at times, brilliant. And no more so than when they include Middle Eastern and acoustic instrumentation as they do on opening cut “Echoes to Come”. It’s as though the band lulls you to a place of inner peace where you might say mantras. And then the electric guitar crush kicks in, snapping you out of your reverie. From there, the album is a brutal onslaught of the inhuman sounding. I have to admit that I nodded my head to “Echoes to Come”. What’s particularly impressive is the band can shift tempos on a dime, and still sound remotely musical. I have to wonder how this track might get performed live, because it does seem complex. The drumming goes from a machine gun rat-tat-tat to a thrashy speed to a much slower tempo. (Slower being a relative term. No ballads here, nope.)

More after this band photograph of Psycroptic:

“Ending”, meanwhile, practically dances with technicality. It’s as though the band is pushing itself to play as hard and fast as it can, but with nice arty flourishes, such as stop-start drumming. (Shades of Rush, one of my favourite bands from my youth!) “A Soul Once Lost” continues in this vein with its herky-jerky rhythms and stunning fretboard work. “Cold”, meanwhile, brings the acoustic Middle Eastern influences back to the fore briefly, before the band races into riding the wave of cascading rhythms and mercurial shifts of tempo. “Setting the Skies Ablaze” starts out almost being classic ‘80s metal, with just a tinge of the industrial metal I grew up on (think Ministry). It’s hyper-frenetic and will have you reaching for your blood pressure pills just to bring things down a little. (Remember, no ballads here.) “Ideals That Won’t Surrender” has a riff that I just can’t place, but it sounds vaguely familiar – but not familiar enough to place where I might have heard it. (Or it could very well just be that I’m remembering the song from the first time I heard it, which would say something about its stickiness.) On the other hand, “Sentence of Immorality” has a stuttering guitar riff that is wildly hypnotic. “The World Discarded” just crunches with a military two-step of drumming. Finally, “Endless Wandering” shows how metal has evolved since Black Sabbath – there’s still the familiarity of the guitar attack that’s Iommi-esque, but this group pushes things ever farther away from the sludge rock of Sabbath and into a world of speedy precision.

If there’s a slight flaw to the disc, it is that it is busy – as though the band is trying to cram in as many ideas and licks into a compact song (most of them are three and four minutes) as possible. As such, the production does feel very active and it can be hard to distinguish one instrument from another. However, where the band does succeed is in the vocals department. Yes, there are barked vocals. Still, there are points where the screams turn into not-quite whispers, or at least a sense of spoken normalcy. Thus, if you’re paying close attention and don’t have a lyrics book handy, you’ll be able to make sense out of the vocals, which can feel like a rarity in metal circles. The focus in metal is moving more and more away from the vocal performance and more into the musicianship and letting the instruments do all of the talking. And talk they do, at least on this album. What I find fascinating is that the start of a song has a way of almost referencing the song that preceded it. So, in a way, this disc has a thematic to it musically that’s quite alluring. Plus, the acoustic touches are interesting. All in all, when you consider the final package, this is an album that basically delivers on all of its cylinders. So I’m sorry that I’m a few weeks from talking and writing about this album, but don’t delay. Psycroptic is a metal album that’s eminently listenable, and proves that great music can be made far away, in the cold, dark corners of the earth. These guys are clearly devils. Tasmanian Devils!

Rating: 7 outta 10

Album: Psycroptic
Artist: Psycroptic
Label: Prosthetic
North American Release Date: 2015-03-10
UK Release Date: 2015-03-09

Hot Lunch: Slappy Sunday EP

Get Your Freak On, Sugar

Ah, garage bands. Taking us back to that time when men grew their hair long, women grew their hair in unsuspecting places, and men and women together dropped acid and painted their vans in electric Kool-Aid colours. That’s the sound that San Francisco Bay area Hot Lunch brings up when you listen to their Slappy Sunday EP, their debut. Sure, the riffs sound familiar to anyone who has gone crate digging (and some of it even sounds remotely Rolling Stones-like – if the Stones had started out as a garage band, though maybe they did, I dunno). Basically these guys take the throttle and push it into maximum overdrive. These five songs are the tonic for anyone who has a record needle with way too much fuzz on it, because these guys take garage rock with a tinge of psychedelia and push it right to the point where that needle is about to go into the red. Radical! I can get down with this. Oh, hells yes. This is groovy, groovy stuff. Man, if this were only a chocolate pudding, this would have all sorts of gravel and grit in it. Yum!

However, if there’s one thing that may seem incongruous about this band it comes in the form of the cover art. Yes, that’s a skateboard and a skateboarder’s shoe. Me, I’m not too sure if Tony Hawk and company would buzz out on this sort of thing, but, then again, maybe they do things differently in California, and garage rock is the new punk. Either way, it’s, like, wowza! This EP has me doing the ramalamadingdong and ready to gear up my hot rod. Ya, the lyrics are nothing to pen a letter to you mother about. And, sure, I’m pretty sure I heard one of these songs on a Steppenwolf album, so to speak. However, if you can look over the rim of your glasses, you’ll get a boatload of enjoyment outta this. So basically strap yourself in for a magic carpet ride, back to a time when getting naked and rolling around in the mud was a rite of passage at Woodstock, as opposed to, you know, sexually assaulting a whole bunch of people (see Woodstock ’99). My motor’s running. How about yours?

Rating: 7 outta 10

Album: Slappy Sunday EP
Artist: Hot Lunch
Label: Scion Audio Visual
North American Release Date: 2015-03-31
UK Release Date: Import

LEGS: Altitud

Yowsa!

The pleasant thing about running your own blog is you get exposed to music that’s quite good that you’d never, ever, stumble upon on your own. Such is the case with Brooklyn’s LEGS, who make “Oh my God!” style good music. They take the angularity of Talking Heads, throw in some LCD Soundsystem and shake it up with a dose of ‘80s synth pop. The thing about LEGS is they do all of this without sounding remotely cheesy in the least. That goes to show that they’ve got some serious songwriting chop-suey, and, had this actually came out in what is often described as the best year for pop music, 1984, we might be knowing these guys in the same way that we know Prince, Cyndi Lauper and company. This is so damn good and catchy beyond belief, as an album. I don’t know how these guys do it, but they do it. Altitud, the group’s debut full-length, is a disc that, in a bygone era, would be the soundtrack to every club kid in need of moving their, well, you know, legs! With flashes of techno and disco, Altitud could be categorized as glistening night-life electronica, but the thing is that the group pulls off the pop hooks with equal flourish.

Already, the group has been picking up notice. Their self-titled EP boasted the single “So Obvious”, which was featured in the 2014 film Obvious Child starring Jenny Slate and, probably my favourite modern comedian, David Cross. (Mr. Show!) Altitud should continue on with this trajectory. Not one song is a dud, and, in fact, by the time you get to “Synthia”, you’ll stop crying that the Talking Heads are no more. The song is a much more streamlined version of the kind of asymmetrical art pop that the Heads were making circa 1983. So, yeah, Altitud will be burning down the house in a neighbourhood somewhere near you. Cripes, even “East River Dance” sounds a lot like Radiohead gone synthy. This is top flight music, and, while it’s hardly “new” sounding, what LEGS are able to do with an old style sound is astounding. So, if marks have to be taken away for a lack of pushing music forward in a new direction, give these guys karma points for taking something of yore and making it seem fresh and invigorating all over again. If you’re an ‘80s nut, and you’re sick of your vinyl collection, give LEGS a try. These dudes know how to throw a party and get down on the floor. Now, everybody dance!

Rating: 8 outta 10

Album: Altitud
Artist: LEGS
Label: Self-released
North American Release Date: 2015-03-31
UK Release Date: 2015-03-31

DAVIDS: “Right On”

DAVIDS (not Davids or David’s) is a Toronto band with a debut EP called 0613EP. They’ve just put out their third (!) video from the EP, which was released in 2013. The video is an electrifying pop number called “Right On”.

Here’s the deal. DAVIDS doesn’t like appearing in their own videos, so they got a black metal band from Cayuga, Ontario, called Apocryphal Avulsion to fill in instead.

For those who suffer epilepsy, don’t watch this. The video is full of strobing effects.

For those with a weak stomach, well, there’s blood and bleeding.

For everyone else, this is a fascinating video (who is the lady in white?) and it’s completely hilarious in terms of having a metal band front a song that’s pretty much an electro-pop ditty. It’s quite the dichotomy.

Of note, the video was directed by DIVORCE (who has worked with Arkells) and edited by Christopher Mills (Interpol, Broken Social Scene, Modest Mouse).

Take a peek, and see what you think. The band notes that they will have a new EP ready soon, by the way.

Taylor Knox: Lines EP

Pop Power

The following is a line (see what I did there?) from the press release for Taylor Knox’s debut EP, Lines: “those hearing Knox for the first time may hear immediate echoes of Sloan.” Yep, yep, and yep. Turns out that Knox is buddies with Sloan’s Andrew Scott, stemming from the days when Knox – formerly the drummer for the Golden Dogs – was opening up for them with his band. So, you’ll listen to these songs and go, “My God, this sounds an awful lot like Sloan.” However, there are subtleties in Knox’s sound. I hear a bit of the Stones’ swagger in “My Backyard” and “I See Lines” kind of has a bit of a Raspberries thing going for it. (Well, if you can pull off the feat of squinting your ears.) And, heck, “That’s What You Do” thumbs its nose in its lyrics to Neil Young’s “A Man Needs a Maid” – the song is about getting a woman to make you feel good, as opposed to being barefoot and pregnant and chained to the stove. And, given that subject matter, the song is pretty noble.

So, in the end, you get modern subject matter with a lot of power poppy goodness. While Knox doesn’t exactly reinvent the genre, and this short album does require a bit of warming up to until you decide that you might like it, and you might roll your eyes at the overt Sloan references, the songs are pretty sturdy. Not quite tornado proof, but not bad all the same. Power pop is one of those unheralded and underappreciated genres – anyone trying their hand at it, at least these days, is probably not going to the top of the charts. Heck, the aforementioned Raspberries had trouble back in their day, at least until they wrote a song about being an overnight sensation. (I see a lot of irony in that tune.) Anyhow, Lines, as much as it draws lines back to the past, is a nice concoction; I really dig what Knox is doing here. Ending as it does on an Emitt Rhodes-esque acoustic guitar ballad earns points in my book. Go ahead and give this a try. And try and not deny that a lot of this does sound a whole lot like Sloan.

Rating: 7 outta 10

Album: Lines EP
Artist: Taylor Knox
Label: MapleMusic
Canadian Release Date: 2015-03-31
US Release Date: 2015-04-07 (Import)
UK Release Date: 2015-04-07 (Import)

https://soundcloud.com/maplemusicrecordings/taylor-knox-fire

Geronimo!: Buzz Yr Girlfriend Vol. Four – Why Did You Leave Me? EP

Buzz Band

As I write these words, the Chicago three-piece Geronimo! is no more. The band played its last ever show on Saturday night. Coming after three full-lengths and three EPs, who knows what the group fell prey to after existing for seven years? However, the group has decided to release the last batch of three songs that they wrote as a group as a digital and cassette only EP, with the rather unwieldy but apropos title, Buzz Yr Girlfriend Vol. Four – Why Did You Leave Me? Basically, I can say this: I wish I’d known about these guys sooner, because, fuck, they smoke. Or smoked, since they no longer exist. This EP simmers with noisy post-punk abandon, sounding a little bit like Chairs Missing-era Wire but noisier! They, too, also sound a great deal like Viet Cong, which makes you wonder if the only route to success with this sound is, like, giving yourself a name that’s guaranteed to get you banned from rather oversensitive venues. (Did anyone ever ban the Gang of Four for their name? Jesus.)

All I’m gonna say is that you need to get these songs into your life, and, once you go, consider going out and hunting down their previous albums. Why? This EP just cooks. “They Put a Hook Inside of Me” will put a fish hook inside your head, after baiting you into taking the line. “Low Fruit on the Vine” simmers with unbridled rage. “Fires of Hell”, the final thing we’ll ever hear from this outfit, is propulsive, as though Krautrock and post-punk was channelled through Shellac. Basically, my reaction is just “wow!” The thing about these songs is that they’re in the mid-range at three, four and five minutes, respectively, but they seem longer and jammier. That’s a rare feat, when a band can captivate you and fool you into thinking that something is longer than it actually is. Geronimo! was a real attention-getting band, for reasons that had nothing to do with their name, and I’m sorry that I missed these dudes when they existed. This is absolutely f’in ridiculously good, and a definite buzz.

Rating: 8 outta 10

Album: Buzz Yr Girlfriend Vol. Four – Why Did You Leave Me? EP
Artist: Geronimo!
Label: Exploding in Sound
North American Release Date: 2015-03-31
UK Release Date: 2015-03-31

Song Premiere: Double Naught Spy Car + Stew: “The Authentic Soul (unedited)”

Before I head out the door for the weekend, I wanted to share a song premiere that I have. Basically, the backstory on this one is that, 13 years ago, a bunch of guys got a grant to record an album. A guy named Stew and a band named Double Naught Spy Car. According to the press release:

For three mind-altering days these were the rules: roll tape, fire up a groove and get to it — create instant songs, no rehearsing, no second takes, no jamming. Free jazz with a pop goal. A reckless Wrecking Crew with no charts. This was terrifying at first, but the five musicians plunged ahead, summoning a group ESP that yielded hard funk, psychedelic blues rock, hypnotica à la Can, and even sweet acoustic textures reminiscent of Astral Weeks.

The fruits of said sessions are the album Panoramic City, which is out April 14. The group basically winnowed down 17-minute “songs” into four-minute bite sized chunks for the record complete with verses, choruses and bridges. However, following the album release, this outfit will be digitally releasing four hours (!) of unedited material that went into the sessions.

“The Authentic Soul” did not, to the best of my knowledge, make it to the album (according to the album song list on Amazon), but I have an unedited, 17-minute freakout version of the song that was put to tape. You can listen to it in the embed below.

I like the song – it’s pretty free form. It’s the sort of thing that my friend Jennifer Woltemade (cameo number two this week) would have turned me on to, and I would like to imagine this sitting in her record collection over in Germany where she now lives.

There’s a lot to take in in these 17 minutes. But if you have a cup of coffee handy and are ready to just go absolutely nuts on a Friday afternoon, you will probably appreciate what follows. It’s pretty raw and primal. A diamond in the rough. But it’s also just interesting to hear a band go at it for 17 minutes without a real direction in mind. I’ve tagged this as “WTF?” but not in a delusory way. If Captain Beefheart and the ilk is your cup of coffee, you’ll know why I did that when you hear this song.

Either way, let me know what you think in the comments!

Von Hertzen Brothers: New Day Rising

A Rising of Some Sort

So I’m reviewing the relatively fine new album from the Von Hertzen Brothers for – whether you want to hear this or not – one reason and one reason only. I thought that by calling your album New Day Rising and having a song of the same title meant something. It meant that you were covering Hüsker Dü, which is probably my favourite all-time band. Well, New Day Rising does marry the melodies with the heavy riffage of Bob Mould and company, but this is not a cover act, at least not on the surface, for better or for worse. Imagine my disappointment when I heard “New Day Rising” and discovered that it was sort of Foo Fighters-ish. Oh well. It’s actually not that bad of a disappointment when you consider that the song is a good one with a hook that sinks deeply into you, and a piano riff that feels ripped from the pages of any big music act from the ‘80s. This is anthemic, soaring, highly contagious rock – at least on “New Day Rising”. While New Day Rising, the album, takes a swan dive in quality in the latter half of the disc, what you do get is a crunchy rock group that knows its way through a lick that stays with you. So that’s to say that this ain’t too bad. There’s definitely something here for those who love alternative rock or even light metal. This is music that will have you pumping a fist in the air and shouting “yeah!”, at least until you get to the syrupy back half.

What I can say about New Day Rising and the Von Hertzen Brothers in general – aside from the fact that the name of these bros has me wondering if they’ve done any vampire hunting back in the day – is that this is a group still searching for something of an identity. And the reason is you get a jaunty piano-hammered rave up called “Dreams” that feels as though it doesn’t belong on this album at all. It’s a great song, a memorable one if you don’t listen too closely to the lyrics, but that, considering that most of this stuff doesn’t sound remotely like the Beatles at all, you get a track that could have come off The White Album is … strange. Really strange. You know that I don’t know what these guys were thinking when they threw “Dreams” on the album, with its saloon piano and its poppy overtones, but, as I always say when confronted with the perplexing, it is what it is. There’s no undoing this. So, New Day Rising is a potpourri of stuff. Some of it fits. Some of it doesn’t. And the egregious thing really happens after “Dreams”. It kinda goes soft shoe. You get a seven-minute song in “Sunday Child” with glossy keyboard overtones that are cold and chilly, and sound as though they belong on a Kate Bush album. And that’s before the song goes completely U2 on you. (Think big, anthemic stadium rock.) And, sure, there’s a rock song with “The Destitute”, but it sounds as though it came from Yes in their declining late ‘70s years. And, finally, you get “Hibernating Heart”, which is exactly as the song title implies.

More after this photograph of the Von Hertzen Brothers:

But the first half of New Day Rising is pretty crackerjack. Aside from the aforementioned “New Day Rising”, you have “You Don’t Know My Name” which sounds a lot like Soundgarden if it was amped up and brought into today’s musical landscape. (Yes, I know that Soundgarden has a reunion album out there, but, based on the mediocre reviews, I’m not sure if I want to hear it.) Anyhow, the song has plenty of get up and go, and I imagine this as the soundtrack to a NASCAR scene in a motion picture with jumpy editing and quick shots. “Trouble”, meanwhile, after a slow start, grinds along with a churning riff that sounds vaguely Middle Eastern. It really grows on you and it might be the one thing on the record that you could tag “metal” the best, aside from some corners that the group goes into that sounds like mid-‘90s Radiohead. And then you get the military precision of “Hold Me Up” that soars like end credits music. It’s not too shabby. That leaves “Black Rain” (whose title does sound remotely Bob Mould-ish) and mopes with melodramatic abandon. It, too, ain’t too bad for what it is, and if you listen to the lyrics, it could very much be a rewrite of “Black Sheets of Rain” with all of the talk of toxins bleeding through skin.

In the end, New Day Rising is a pretty good album. It’s not Hüsker Dü – a shame, really, and a missed opportunity – but it’s good enough. For those who like big arena rock and Top 40 radio rock, well, you wouldn’t be doing any wrong in picking this up. It’s intriguing at moments, but, again, the album really suffers from a lack of distinctiveness. A lot of this seems faceless and evocative of other bands that are ruling the airwaves right about now. So you have to take this for what it is, and know that there’s no great reinvention of the wheel. However, the songs are pretty sturdy and well worth hearing. And that might be enough for most people. At least, there’s nothing that’s truly embarrassing, even if “Dreams” does stick out like a sore thumb and does seem a little sophomoric in the lyrics department. (“I’d like to climb a mountain all the way up north / To kiss your pretty face by the edge of the falls / I’d like to see you naked before I get old / Yadda yadda yadda, after that school-boy poetry line, nothing else really matters.”) Still, if you’re a rock historian, there’s fun here trying to spot all of the definitive influences, which is a great game to play, at least the first few times through. The Von Hertzen Brothers aren’t innovators, but they do what they do somewhat well, and, once you get past the obvious flaws, New Day Rising is less of a new day and more of a rising, particularly if it’s your fist you wanna raise.

Rating: 6 outta 10

Album: New Day Rising
Artist: Von Hertzen Brothers
Label: Caroline / Spinefarm
North American Release Date: 2015-03-24
UK Release Date: 2015-03-30

The Rentiers: Here is a List of Things That Exist EP

An EP to Read

The Rentiers is essentially the one man band of Joel Tannenbaum of Plow United and Ex Friends, along with whomever he feels like playing with. On this outing, the Here is a List of Things That Exist EP, he’s joined by drummer Mikey Erg (The Ergs), vocalist Anika Pyle (Chumped) and producer/multi-instrumentalist Tyler Pursel (Gym Class Heroes). And what you get with these four songs is highly literate popsmithery. On “The Legend of Molly Pitcher”, he name checks Nicki Minaj in the same breath as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Sound-wise, the band is basically a hyper version of the Decemberists, just without all of the sea shanty songs. This is pretty straight up folk rock, at least the American version of it, and it’s interesting to hear. There’s nothing here that necessarily blows my socks off, but I listen to this and find it quite tasteful.

The reason for that is because these songs feel autobiographical, and seem to reference nouns in the songwriter’s life. Or perhaps not. “I Can Picture Margaret Stackhouse” is actually about a high school student who was 15 years old when she wrote a critique of 2001 that was so on the mark, that, when it was forwarded on to filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, he marvelled that it was the most intelligent thing about the film that he ever read. (Maybe he was being nice given the age of the reviewer.) So there’s a focus of the narrative beyond that of Tannenbaum’s that merges the personal with the public, and that feels incredibly dense and thoughtful. So there’s much, even in four seemingly simple songs, that will make you stop and think, make you go to the search engines to look up all of the references, and then reflect on what that all means. There’s a bulk of information in this EP, so much so that when Tannnenbaum sings “I can’t concentrate” on “The Legend of Molly Pitcher” repeatedly, you believe him. Essentially, spend some time with the Rentiers if you feel like listening to a novella. This is highly accomplished, even if the music might seem plain at first blush.

Rating: 7 outta 10

Album: Here is a List of Things That Exist EP
Artist: The Rentiers
Label: Square Of Opposition
North American Release Date: 2015-03-24
UK Release Date: 2015-03-10