Slipped Discs June 2011

Discs You May Have Missed
by John Noyd

tUnE-yArDs

tUnE-yArDs

Initial Thoughts

June sizzles with CD titles extolling walks on the razor’s edge. Southern soothsayer GRAYSON CAPPS’ swamp-water gumbos haunt scorching, back-porch rock ‘n roll in, “The Lost Cause Minstrels,” while looped-out art-pop warrior TUNE-YARDS’ tussling percussion wonders, “whokill.” Legendary Sonic Youth guitarist, THURSTON MOORE brings bittersweet relief from brooding influences inside the richly picturesque, “Demolished Thoughts,” visiting Madison’s High Noon July 16th. Babble on Babylonia desperate times call for desperate measures.


Disc Reviews


Dawes - Nothing is Wrong

Dawes - Nothing is Wrong

Dawes

Album title: Nothing is Wrong
Record Label: ATO

Centered lessons season solemn solace; load-bearing laments serve thoughtful folk-rock fodder surrounded by cowboy hooks and slow-burning solos.  Dawes’ perceptive interventions weave nature’s metaphors between common sense and candid humanity. Estranged and tamed, tangled in twang, “Nothing,” inserts humbled hopes washed in honesty, crafting affable parables swimming through level-headed measures, street-corner troubadours versed in stoic weariness wound around fleeting days

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Art Brut - Brilliant! Tragic!

Art Brut - Brilliant! Tragic!

Art Brut

Album title: Brilliant! Tragic!
Record Label: Cooking Vinyl

Clever condescension rocks around hell-bent expressions as, “Brilliant,” rips through half-rapped narratives combining insolent wit dipped in irony, sputtering bluster outsmarting intellect and bristling against convention. Revealing and rebellious, post-punk apostles Art Brut’s blunt frustrations corral rough and tumble rhetoric whose cheeky reasons begat tender second-guessing amid cut-throat couplets whose deafening deliberateness clamor for conclusions colliding with middle-class conceits .

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The Wooden Birds - Two Matchsticks

The Wooden Birds - Two Matchsticks

The Wooden Birds

Album title: Two Matchsticks
Record Label: Barsuk

American Analog Set’s Andrew Kenny’s new band retains AAS’s laidback outlook compiling crisp wisdom inside colorful cooing and modest acoustic musings. Cozy, folk-pop breeziness fortified by shimmering marimbas, soft strumming and horse-drawn rhythms, “Matchsticks,” glows in deceptively demure assurances churning patient complacence from twilight insights and lively shyness, inviting politeness channeling sly, bouncy foxtrots, cantering ballads dispensing love-sick riffs .

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Elysian Fields - Last Night On Earth

Elysian Fields - Last Night On Earth

Elysian Fields

Album title: Last Night On Earth
Record Label: Ojet

Wickedly blissful whisperings slide between sumptuous chamber-folk symphonies , bluesy goth-rock siroccos and coy, alt-pop ballets, “Earth,” works sensual memories beneath placid passions toppling headlong down mesmerizing torch songs, potent potions quenching thirsty bursts from dream-laden maidens. Stirring purrs and banshee sweetness catapult EF’s mythological waltzes into melodic exotica, an embroidered fairy-tale cabaret pried from childhood fears and sentimental tension.

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Tom Vek - Leisure Seizure

Tom Vek - Leisure Seizure

Tom Vek

Album title: Leisure Seizure
Record Label: Cooperative Music USA

Hard-wired, pneumatic-addled New Wave statements invade unbraided electro-clash abrasions set to tarnished tempos, droll factory-fashioned funk and slinky syncopated synthesizers; Vek’s clattering malice and energetic menace coil around coarse torque constructing post-industrial petulance via sermons on the dance floor. Suspicious and ambitious, “Leisure,” tumbles wonderfully, trigger-happy slap-shots aimed at callously cool feigned disdain, fabulously retro-fitted fits equipped with post-modern imaginations.

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Alina Simone - Make Your Own Danger

Alina Simone - Make Your Own Danger

Alina Simone

Album title: Make Your Own Danger
Record Label: Pentar

Thrusting cellos, hunted drums, writhing flights of tungsten tongues dressed in blacksmith brass sparking private and perilous prose, “Danger,” wrangles war-cry choruses from hounded prayers, elusive truths become locomotive prey charging into accelerated folk-punk blues. Brittle, bold and brazen, Simone’s furtive curtsies and volcanic candor reinforce scornful searchlight labors, thorny bulimic images navigating lean serpentine situations, guarded, bartered and charmed.

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Final Thoughts

Every risk brings its collateral damage, so it’d be remiss to focus on daredevils and ignore acts whose name and CDs consider action’s aftermath. Absorb inventive, lo-fi eccentric HOSPITAL SHIPS’ pounding, peppermint-pop psychedelia, “Lonely Twin.” Glossy, club-hungry indie-pop acolytes FRIENDLY FIRES’ whip-smart, Huxley-inspired beat-feast, “Pala,” and majestic and manic studio magician, WORLD’S END GIRLFRIEND’s hyperbolic cauterized jigsaw, “Seven Idiots,” also qualify. Additional candidates of consequences include maverick polyphonic-rock circus-masters BATTLES’ sprawling, jaw-dropping, recombinant, “Gloss Drop,” and slow-baked bohemian balladeer, BOY WITHOUT GOD’s rural avant-blues country-rock grooviness, “God Bless the Hunger.”