Joan of Arc Presents: Don't Mind Control

    Ever been to a Chinese buffet? To extend that experience to a separate sense, grab a copy of Joan of Arc’s new eighteen track “Don’t Mind Control”, which sports a cast of over forty different musicians in the Chicago indie scene who have, at one time or another, collaborated with Tim Kinsella, frontman of Joan of Arc. However, the tracks here aren’t a group effort with Tim as ringmaster. Instead these are individual submissions by those former collaborators’ present musical outlets. So, like the aforementioned buffet, some of this will be a delicious bargain, some will be disturbingly absent of any recognizable flavor whatsoever, and some of it will leave you curled over in a Port Authority bathroom stall for the next few hours.

    Among those reigning in the unfortunate last category is A Tundra’s “The Doug McComb Over”, which sways between lazy honky tonk and asinine twang. The ‘we gave my girlfriend a part in this song’ female vocals are the real poop-cherry on top. Most disappointing is that many of the tracks just meander like blindfolded infants in a laundry basket full of broken glass. As entertaining as that sounds, tracks like “Oakley” “Uwar” and “Kickstart” come off as either acid-damaged fumbling or willful laziness.

    Now for the bargains: Owen’s (AKA Mike Kinsella) submission, “No More No Where” reaches the same addicting loner-catharsis which has propelled his previous work, and Euphone’s “Friends in Common” hits on a spacey pocketed groove. Cale Parks’ “Long Looks” recalls the highly-orchestrated high of bands like Menomena. Tim’s solo effort provides the 3D glasses to properly see into the mind of an insane person, while Vacations give a jaunty tour through innocent math-rock.

    Viewed as an album, Don’t Mind Control is unforgivably inconsistent in both tone and quality, which begs the question- why was this released under the banner of Joan of Arc? JOA has always been the product of Tim Kinsella “and friends”, but this pushes the definition a bit too far. A better title might have been A Whole Slew of Bands, Some of Which Are Good: An Introduction to the Chicago Scene. Obviously the phrasing could use some work, but the sentiment remains: this is not an album, it’s a sampler. Those already inducted into the cult of Kinsella would do good to browse these tracks for new fodder, but anyone looking for newer JOA should just buy 2009’s Flowers.




Don't Mind Control

The Ghost of a Thousand- New Hopes, New Demonstrations

    Hey internet, I’m back at school, which means both quality free time and less motivation to update this blog. That said, I’ll still try to post a review here as much as I can. I’m not throwing in the towel quite yet, I’m just plugging it under the door so the cops can’t smell the good food I’m cooking. On today’s menu: a British hardcore band who go by the handle of The Ghost of a Thousand. A thousand whats, you might ask? Even they probably don’t know, but they’re sure angry about it. Their debut This is Where the Fight Begins was about as heavy as they come, and even trying to keep up with singer Tom Lacey would cause most to scream blood. These Britains brought back the pain, the noise, and the dissonance from that first release, and covered it in boiling oil until it confessed to having some rock and metalcore influences, and then let themselves on fire in protest.

    Besides unleashing a few new riffs from their veritable bag of tricks, New Hopes, New Demonstrations has a much higher production value, and it gives the band room to stretch out. And stretch out they do, sometimes even not shouting! As incredible as the prospect of identifiable lyrics is, they seem to always place the worst lyrics in the quiet passages, meaning the ten comprehendible words are also the dumbest. As well, the grit that This is Where the Fight Begins brought to the party was also integral to its success- Lacey’s voice was like drinking spoiled milk, and every bass drum hit was a kick to the stomach. Did someone say milkshakes?

    Some of the influences they bring out on this sophomore effort meld effortlessly, and others turn sour right away. The twang of “Moved as Mountains, Dreamt of by the Sea” makes the anvil vocals practically tear the skin from your eyes, but the misplaced indie intro of “Nobody likes a Hero” wears as comfortably as a steel wool sweater. Overall, it’s hard to consider New Hopes, New Demonstrations a more fulfilling album. Obviously, no band should continue to rewrite their first album over and over, but the sound they have now isn’t quite at the level of completeness as it was two years prior. They are a band in transition, and hopefully they’ll come out even stronger on the other side of it.




New Hopes, New Demonstrations

EP Blast! #2

Thumbnail- s/t EP

[can't find the album art]

    Nine tracks, and thirty-five minutes of music. I have no idea how this doesn’t qualify as a full-length. Either way, this is pretty much what you would expect from a screamo group: noisy and chaotic, with under-produced drums. Thumbnail come strapped to give you a headache, and leave you with an aneurysm. When they’re not making a lot of earth-shattering noise, they slow down the feedback for another build, which makes the whole EP a flatline affair. Lots of the same, but it’s not terribly good or bad. Recommended for fans of Saetia, Mohinder, and other bands of that ilk.

Born Ruffians- s/t EP


    A pretty bare-bones group who follow in the vein of The Pixies. Singer Luke LaLonde has one of those manic voices that is fucking terrible and unforgettable at the same time; guy sounds like he ran a marathon before each track. There are oddly southern qualities to them, despite being from Canada, and “Piecing it Together” strikes a long-forgotten Talking Heads sound (a compliment). Lyrics are relatably unpoetic, and successful for that reason, and “This Sentence Will Ruin/Save Your Life” is catchier than pink-eye in a frat house. Long story short, Born Ruffians are immensely fun, albeit none too inventive.

Engine Down/ Twelve Hour Turn- split EP



    Engine Down are a total anomaly, more a springboard than anything else. They formed out of Sleepytime Trio [great band]. After they broke up, Keeley Davis went on to join Sparta [okay band] and Cornbread Compton moved to Cursive [another great band]. How they didn’t get more recognition is evinced by their six-minute submission to this split- it’s gorgeous and brutal at once, but clearly appeals to a niche market. Damn shame. Twelve Hour Turn follow a tough act with the surprisingly melodic “Wide Awake”, and the disappointingly similar “Flowers for the Dead”. Thumbnail would kill to be these guys.

O Lucky Man!- When I Was Young I Would Type Your Name Just to See it in Front of Me


    A very mathy duo from Berkeley who make the noise of ten musicians. Zach Hill-style drumming peppers this whole (long-windedly titled) EP, jumping from blast beats to warpspeed jazz so quickly that beats and fills become one. The guitarwork here is similarly busy and difficuly to follow. Because they never settle into any comfortable passages, it ends up sounding more like a good ol’ King Crimson circle jerk. If they could reign themselves in a bit, they might end up somewhere between Make Believe and Maps & Atlases, but they sound too much like they want to prove their chops.


Catch 'Em All! Again!

Sorry!

All three of you may have noticed I didn't do a post yesterday.
The only explanation i give is this:


Post to come later today
~b

Menomena- Friend and Foe

    Any of you who watch bad 70’s karate movies will be familiar with the words “drunken master”. For those who aren’t, it’s a fighting style which seeks to imitate the stumbling unpredictability of being completely shithoused, but maintaining impeccable balance so as to overcome one’s opponents while confusing them. If the aforementioned is the result of kung-fu monks and alcohol, then Menomena is what happens when black-belt music students find LSD. The only apt comparison to their heavily orchestrated and reeling style is The Flaming Lips, but Coyne & Co. are just their logical jumping off point. On Friend and Foe, this Portland trio takes quirky layering, slaps on some inside-out guitars, and fills in the cracks with saxophones, trombones, glockenspiels, jingling keys, and whatever else they can claim to play. Gadzooks! Unlike the similarly off-the-walls Man Man, whose knack for secondary instrumentation is dotted with nonsense call-and-response shouts, Menomena’s recordings remain downtempo, professional, and somehow natural.

    The cool thing about Menomena remains that they don’t have a “frontman” per se. Every one of the three members takes singing duties in turn (and sometimes concurrently, for harmonizing purposes), and each are capable of playing at least 10,000 instruments each. So that might seem like an overstatement, but who are you going to believe, your common sense or the internet? Moving onward- percussionist Danny Seim (who I would like to believe is somehow related to Hella’s Spencer Seim), lends some genius beats and keeps up with dozens of come-and-go orchestrations without overplaying. This is especially true of the gorgeous “Wet and Rusting”, a rainy day soundtrack candidate which lays acoustic guitars, synths, and mirages of piano over a sad-eyed spider’s web bass.

    As you may have guessed, this is a musician’s album. Everything in their composition is both tremendous and unique, but the lyrics aren’t quite at the same level. Their words compliment the music well, and all three singers have equally enthralling voices, but “Oh in the morning/I stumble/my way towards/the mirror and my makeup/it's light out/and I now/face just what I'm made of” is about the best this record has to offer, making lyrics a negligible stumbling block. This is more than made up for by the consistency of Friend and Foe, which remains impressive throughout (as opposed to the last few reviews, which have been top-heavy let-downs). I’ve been waiting to say it: Friend and Foe is phenomenomenal.




Friend and Foe

mewithoutYou- [A--> B] Life

    Doesn’t it suck being told what to think? What an ego that must take. One issue of particular sensitivity for such speech is religion [whodda thunk?!]: whether it’s the Devil Wears Prada telling me I ought to believe in god, or Cursive telling me I’m doing it right, the result is the same- preachy people sound like twits. I realize the irony of preaching about preaching; this blog is actually a ruse to find recruits for my new MetaChurch. Regardless, between both ends of the twit spectrum, there are a select few who can talk about the great beyond without judgment, and among the finest of this lot is the Philly-based post-hardcore group mewithoutYou.

    “Experimental” doesn’t really do these guys justice. More accurately, they’re about twenty different genres baked together (somehow) logically, with a ripped-from-the-heart confessional spoken word poetry glaze. Despite sounding a lot tastier, that’s not quite as easy to say. Opener “Bullet to Binary” has the sci-fi bleeps and a menacing guitar which act as a perfect set up to Aaron Weiss’ vocals, which have been reported to set microphones aflame from a distance of up to sixty feet. Each track flows into the next on A to B Life, and the followup “The Ghost” is the kick to the gut while you’re still down. Weiss channels a throatier Guy Picciotto with “You were a song that I couldn't sing/you were a story I couldn't tell/I've only ever loved myself/But I've loved myself so well” on “Nice and Blue”, where the world’s slowest pickslide sounds like splitting the spine of a brand new hardcover.

    While A to B is mostly aggressive, mewithoutYou have the good sense to quiet down here and there to make the hard parts sharper. “Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt” could pass for downbeat Pinback, until it expands into a massive alt-country crescendo. “Gentlemen” strikes back viciously after the instrumental “A” with the words “And through a garden overgrown/Oh, it's a long walk home/I said I'd not come back /Well I'm coming back-” and the pause before “And you'd better be alone” is guaranteed to send you shivering, next day delivery. This record pushes the bounds of post-hardcore by incorporating a lot of unlikely candidates (like the Slash-style solo on “Be Still Child” and the RX Bandits synths of “We Know Who Our Enemies Are”) which makes it a sometimes tough but remarkable listen.




[A--> B] Life

Prefuse 73- Vocal Studies+ Uprock Narrative

    So here we are, at day fifteen, halfway through this project, and still miles away from St. Alfonso’s legendary pancake breakfast. Grabbed this record from Every Bunny Nestle, another one of the great and supportive blogs I’ve found along the way, and realized how perfectly it fits as the mid-point milestone: track nine, “Last Light” features Sam Prekop of The Sea and Cake [review #3 ], and “Blacklist” has guest vocals from Aesop Rock [review #4]. However, this won’t solely fulfill my need to derive artificial nostalgia from something that’s barely two weeks old. Vocal Studies + Uprock Narrative falls into a genre both alien to this blog, and mostly unmined by yours truly.

    The aforementioned genre is what’s known as IDM, or Intelligent Dance Music. Such nomenclature rightly places a divide between this “smart” dance music, and the rest of the insipid garbage. But this is both a blessing and curse, because when a whole genre is out to prove something, it not only reacts in contrast, but becomes one-dimensional. Good thing Prefuse 73, AKA Guillermo Scott Herren, is less concerned with letting everyone know how cool he is, and more interested in groove. Rather than the Aphex Twin knob twiddling weirdness, Prefuse finds an easy-going balance between organic bounce, and inorganic interruptions, rounded out with some of the “vocal studies” mentioned earlier, from Aesop Rock, MF Doom, and Mikah 9.

    Boot-stomping intro “Radio Attack” sets the precedent with never-sit-still drums and a constantly evolving and seemingly bottomless sample cache. The occasional unrecognizable rap sample leaks in, either taking hold of the beat, or slithering by underneath at, adding an all-too-absent human element. Mikah 9 transfuses “Life/Death” with a high-speed dose of the former, but the real pièce de résistance is “Blacklist”, where Doom and Aesop take Prefuse’s haymaker drum machines and hitch them to a buggy on the way to the sun. As if their performance wasn’t impressive enough, Doom reminds listeners “keep in mind this flow is used for practice, even so it’s still top-choice on the tracklist”.

    For anyone curious about electronic music, this is a fantastic album for expanding your horizons. There’s not a bad track on here. But as someone who craves a gritty, no-budget EP, IDM can sometimes feel empty and soul-dead. Prefuse manages to put enough heart in to impress ‘crossover’ fans, but this probably won’t get many more listens from me.




Vocal Studies + Uprock Narrative