OOIOO Armonico Hewa

[Thrill Jockey; 2009]

By

Rating: 2.5/5

Styles: experimental rock
Others: Boredoms, Free Kitten, OLAbi, Yuka Honda

Yoshimi P-We sure likes to keep herself busy. When she’s not drumming for brutal noise rockers Boredoms, hammering toms in drumming troupe OLAbi, or noise-making with Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon in Free Kitten, she’s fronting her own band. With OOIOO, Yoshimi takes the helm of an all-woman quartet and minces the creative ideas she’s gathered throughout her career. Sure, each OOIOO record involves a change in direction for the relentlessly imaginative Yoshimi, but we can always expect prominent drumming, grimy guitar riffs, and plenty of chanting.

More about: OOIOO

Links: OOIOO - Thrill Jockey

The Album Leaf A Chorus of Storytellers

[Sub Pop; 2010]

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Rating: 1.5/5

Styles: indie rock
Others: Sigur Rós, The Crimson Curse, GoGoGo Airheart

Although it’s far from being a memorable record, there’s a moment on The Album Leaf’s debut — 1999’s An Orchestrated Rise to Fall — that haunts me as I type these words. No matter how many lead paragraphs I try to write, my mind keeps drifting back to “An Interview,” an unassuming little tune that begins with a hissy conversation between a man and a young girl. The tape’s hard to make out as it is — just some snippet of blasé dialogue or another — but moments later, a worn-out acoustic guitar appears and warps my sense of perception entirely.

More about: The Album Leaf

Links: The Album Leaf - Sub Pop

Edge of Darkness Dir. Martin Campbell

[Warner Bros.; 2010]
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Styles: thriller, conspiracy
Others: Casino Royale, Beyond Borders

With the resurgence of anti-corporate populism on both sides of the political aisle, the timing seems apt for director Martin Campbell’s Edge of Darkness, a remake of his own 1985 BBC miniseries about shadowy business and government collusion. Transposing the setting from Old England to New, the film centers on gruff Boston detective Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson) and his quest to uncover the truth about his daughter’s (Bojana Novakavich) brutal murder.

TMT Cerberus 10 Old Slang Line

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TMT Cerberus
Subtitle: 
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Old Slang Line

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Fri, 2010-01-01
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Bryan Reed
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In this ever-expanding musical world, there’s a wealth of 7-inches, cassettes, CD-Rs, and objet d’art being released that, due to their limited quantities and adventurous sonics, go unnoticed by the public at large. TMT Cerberus seeks to document the aesthetic of these home recorders and backyard labels. Email us here.

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Little Claw Human Taste

[Not Not Fun; 2009]

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Rating: 3.5/5

Styles: garage, basement, backyard death-surf
Others: Sic Alps, The Bitters, Woven Bones, The Ronettes

Given last year’s buzz about the re-emergence of an ill-defined lo-fi sound, it was a shame when a solid album like Little Claw’s Human Taste didn’t get more attention. But, in retrospect, this buzz had more to do, as Paul Brousse might have said, with language than deed. For, despite the construction and proliferation of this lo-fi discourse by some of the most influential indie music websites and blogs throughout the year, when it came time to organize best-of-the-year lists, the bands that were used to build this discourse were startlingly under-represented.

More about: Little Claw

Links: Little Claw - Not Not Fun

Visqueen Message to Garcia

[638 Local Artist; 2009]

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Rating: 2.5/5

Styles: glam-punk
Others: Veruca Salt, Sleater-Kinney

It may put up a pugnacious front, but at its heart, Visqueen’s Message to Garcia is an unabashedly sappy love-letter. Singer Rachel Flotard’s scrappy tales of love and heartbreak come to screaming life against a bigger-is-better musical backdrop, so that even a mournful, country-tinged piano-and-string ballad like “So Long” takes on epic, operatic proportions. The band’s obvious exuberance is infectious, but unfortunately they don’t quite manage to sustain it.

More about: Visqueen

Links: Visqueen - 638 Local Artist

The Paranoids Dir. Gabriel Medina

[Oscilloscope Laboratories; 2010]
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Styles: comedy
Others: The Unwritten History, They Must Have Done Something

Luciano Gauna pulls the curtains shut to his apartment window and starts to dance.

Josephine Foster Graphic As A Star

[Fire; 2010]

By

Rating: 4/5

Styles: folk, art songs, poetry
Others: Born Heller, Patt Smith, Jason Ajemian, The Children’s Hour

Although Emily Dickinson is one of the most well-known American poets by name — we all have to read her in high school — she doesn’t exactly have a lot of greatest hits. If asked to name one of her poems (tricky, since none of them have titles), most of us would probably come up with “Because I could not stop for death,” “Wild Nights — Wild Nights!”, or, maybe, due to the proto-surreal quality of the opening line, “Hope is the thing with feathers.” What you might not remember, though, is that her poetry isn’t the easiest read.

More about: Josephine Foster

Links: Josephine Foster - Fire

The Red Krayola with Art & Language Five American Portraits

[Drag City; 2010]

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Rating: 2.5/5

Styles: conceptual art-rock, Americana
Others: The Raincoats, Jim O’Rourke

Many discs in my collection must be prefaced with some sort of conceptual screed before I share them with my friends. Clearly, I feel quite at home with ‘art rock,’ and it’s even better when said art rock has a sense of humor. In the case of Mayo Thompson’s latest, Five American Portraits, the humor and the intricacies of concept are best left to the listener to uncover themselves. Here, we have The Red Krayola with conceptual group Art & Language, and judging by the latter’s previous collaborations, these are real intellectuals we’re dealing with.

More about: The Red Krayola with Art & Language

Links: The Red Krayola with Art & Language - Drag City

Echo and the Bunnymen The Fountain

[Ocean Rain; 2009]

By

Rating: 2/5

Styles: pop/rock, post-punk
Others: The Cure, latter-day Television, The Mission U.K.

As much as I enjoy bands like The Arcade Fire and The National, it confounds me when I hear people lauding their novelty. Bands like Echo and the Bunnymen may have something to say about that. After all, their masterpiece, 1984’s Ocean Rain, is undergoing a reexamination for both its brilliance and long-lasting influence. In fact, the brooding, mystical, orchestral-pop opus has been the subject of two reissues over the past decade, and the band has recently made several live appearances featuring track-by-track performances of the album in its entirety.

More about: Echo and the Bunnymen

Links: Echo and the Bunnymen - Ocean Rain

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