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HOT OFF THE PRESS (#3)
It's Wednesday, time for another issue HOT OFF THE PRESS. This is the third installment of a weekly first glance at music discovered in the last seven days, whether it be just-released, just-leaked, or some long-lost gem that has remained under the radar. Click here for last week’s column, which reviewed White Denim and Black Kids, and click here for the first installment, which regarded the new Beck, Fiery Furnaces, and Ponytail. Read on...
Au – Verbs
Released June 24 on Aagoo Records (buy it here).
What a bewitching calamity of an album this is. It’s full of ups and downs, and some of it sounds like little more than a bunch of people tuning their instruments or screwing off pre-rehearsal, but when the noises this flock of musicians creates come together into a song, the results can be pretty damn pleasing. Often cited for their similarities to pre-Strawberry Jam Animal Collective, I find the more appropriate parallel here is post-Akron/Family Akron/Family, as the sing-along commune ‘round the campfire feel here is hard to miss. The Portland outfit, led by Luke Wyland (who, because of his last name, surely hears his fair share of bad Stone Temple Pilots jokes), is at its finest when it employs any of its female singers in the lead role, and this tactic more often than not leads them away from aimless whooping and hollering and towards verse-chorus structure. Mid-album showstopper “rr vs. d,” a clattering and clomping riot of piano-led percussion that ebbs and flows with joyous abandon, is a good example of where the band goes right. Altogether, it’s a compelling collection of work, which, much like recent releases from Paavoharju and Sigur Ros, has enough strong moments to make up for occasional directionlessness.
Pyramids – Pyramids
Out now on Hydrahead Records (buy it here).
No, these aren’t the same Pyramids who landed a top 20 hit with a surf-rock ditty way back in 1964, nor are they the Pyramids who, almost fourty years ago, founded something called “Skinhead Reggae,” a genre which sounds profoundly terrible. They also aren’t The Pyramids, a crunk-rock duo who are experts at the dreadfully mundane. The Pyramids in question here happen to be Denton-based post-rockers following in the honored footsteps of Explosions in the Sky and Do Make Say Think, while also carving themselves quite a niche of their own. And that niche is dark and exacting, as they often leave the beautiful behind so as to assault the listener more directly, often with charging percussion and twisted vocals. Also aiding their separation from the sea of lyricless music which has bombarded the masses since the turn of the century is this album’s bonus disc, a nine-track collection of remixes by the mostly-anonymous likes of James Plotkin and Lovesliescrushing, but buttressed by a star turn from Jesu. Ultimately, although Pyramids aren’t likely to find themselves on the cover of Spin magazine anytime soon (hell, they hardly turn up on a Google search), they have potential, and with a broadening of their sound they should start to make themselves the first “Pyramids” band you think of, rather than the fourth.
By blog contributor Nick Courtright.