Category: Reviews
Oh Cursive, you’re so cool
In a twinkle of starry lights, a pumpkin sat, glowing, declaring the band’s name: Cursive. The crowd went wild, screaming and fist-pumping, washing the stage with the kind of excitement usually saved for the headliner – that night, Minus the Bear – as singer and guitarist Tim Kasher took the stage with the rest of the band.
The calm-inducing lights suddenly made perfect sense at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta that night, October 24, as the band swept into the slow and thought-provoking “This House Alive”, the first song on Cursive’s new album, I Am Gemini. But the band, an inarguable group of musical geniuses, knew not to dwell in the serene for too long. Suddenly, in a burst of nearly tangible energy, drummer Cully Symington ushered in “A Gentleman Caller”, one of the band’s older, more acclaimed tracks. Kasher’s ferocious screams – declaring the horrors of love – forced the crowd into an almost hypnotic sort of head-bobbing.
Cursive proved through the next few songs that they are a band that is obviously impressive on recordings, but cannot be fully appreciated until seen live. Their songs explore universal human experiences like love and loneliness, and the band’s deep personal connection with its dynamic lyrics became clear as Kasher strolled back and forth across the stage, simultaneously appearing to contemplate the complexity and emotions behind the words he sang and interacting with the entire audience.
With a slightly country/folk edge that kept the audience enthralled and impressed, Cursive reached the middle of their set with “Caveman”. This unique track was the ideal predecessor to “The Sun and Moon”, another new song, easily recognizable by its undeniable catchiness. Intelligently referencing the likes of Dionysus and Gommorah, Kasher’s voice – rising steadily, magnetically – kept everyone, on stage and off, dancing until the very last note.
Cursive put together their set list incredibly well; immediately following “The Sun and Moon”, a crowd favorite, came one of the band’s most well-known, praised tunes: “The Recluse”. The instrumentals during this song were superb, a hubbub of odd instruments like sleigh bells. These sounds meshed impeccably with Kasher’s voice, which could only be described during this song as a collage, alternating constantly from a nearly inaudible whisper to one of his signature strings of throaty screams. Just a few songs later, another old favorite, “Art is Hard”, kept the crowd drawn to the band as a series of string instruments were played and the tempo was lifted ever further in a chorus of almost jazz-like melancholy.
The band finished with a rendition of “Dorothy at Forty” – an interesting choice, as it is definitely a lesser-known track. However, Cursive’s use of this song to finish off a perfect set simply proves their ability to judge what an audience wants – the song was a final, explosive burst of loud energy that kept everyone moving until the very last second, especially as Kasher opened his jaws in an enormous yell that reverberated around the room.
Before Kasher and crew walked off stage, he made one last, unnecessary declaration: “WE ARE CURSIVE!” If anyone in the crowd hadn’t heard of Cursive before, they certainly knew who they were now – and would never forget.
REVIEW: TRC’s The Story So Far
I have an interesting mix for you guys. I’m here to introduce London’s TRC with their debut U.S album release called The Story So Far. Here’s where it gets crazy…
Step one: Take the band Touché Amoré and add a full cup of British accent.
Step Two: Stir in a tablespoon of Bring Me the Horizon.
Step Three: Throw in just a pinch of Bullet For My Valentine.
Combine and let it come to a boil, then simmer. And there you have it… this is what TRC is made of.
TRC has made an impact in the UK underground music scene and are now here to see what ruckus they can kick up in the states. They signed in May with No Sleep Records, through which they are releasing TSSF. TRC is actually an acronym for “The Revolution Continues.” Their singles “Go Hard or Go Home” and “H.A.T.E.R.S.” have turned eyes on them in the UK and deemed them pioneers for the newest and eagerly anticipated wave of hardcore. Their latest single off of The Story So Far album, “#TEAMUK”, landed the band with a nomination for this years Metal Hammer Golden Gods Award as Best UK Band.
“Bastard” is probably one of my favorites on the album. I like the riffs and chords they use. Can I just say that I personally love UK hardcore bands? BMTH, Enter Shikari, Asking Alexandria… Just having the heavy accent adds that little tweak of difference from US hardcore bands, and they’re so catchy.
“London’s Greatest Love Story” is a great song for those with relationship woes, and it’s excellent to relate to. It’s a song about a guy lying to a girl that loves him, all the things he’s done behind her back, and how he wishes he never did any of it. Given the chance could I go back/and unbreak promises littered with mistakes/cause I’m telling her fiction/but Facebook pics are making me the villain/for testing waters where mermaids wait/blowing hot and cold/yeah they’re hot for a day/but what I’m left with is a keepsake/as my love boat floats away.
So, uhhmerica, tell me what you think of these across-the-pond-ers and if you can get down to their music. After a couple of listens, I definitely can! The Revolution Continues…
Members and Twitters:
Chris Robson – Vocals – @trcofficial
Anthony Carroll – Vocals – @anthonytrc
Charlie Wilson – Guitar – @CharlieTRC
Ben Taylor Dingwall – Guitar – @BenDingersTRC
Oliver Reece – Bass – @OliverReeceTRC
Lasselle Lewis – Drums – @BlacklavendaTRC
REVIEW: …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead’s Lost Songs
Would you like the V8 or the hybrid? The bacon burger or the salad? No, sorry, you have to choose. And since we’re already forcing you to make difficult decisions: Do you want your rock refined or raunchy?
… And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead have no problem dealing with this eternal conundrum. While 2002’s Source Tags & Codes stubbornly insisted on delivering real hooks and interesting compositions, it didn’t pull nearly enough punches to qualify as not hardcore. While you couldn’t call the album typical of the genre, you also couldn’t ignore the fact that any time a chance for understatement arose, the band took it into the alley behind the club and rearranged its face – reaffirming, in resolute and polarizing fashion, their own scene cred.
While Trail of Dead did go on to explore some other options, most agree they missed a signpost along the way, privileging extremity and caginess over focus and precision. Now, ten years after Codes, they present Lost Songs [out Oct. 23 on Superball], a record that recalls not only the sound, but the ethos of the band circa 2002.
Frontman Conrad Keely still sees the world through the same intensifying lens; every breakup is an apocalypse, every memory a 2×4 to the solar plexus. But Keeley is forty now, so instead of blotting out the sun with stories of failed relationships and professional frustrations, he’s more concerned with the zombified indolence that keeps people from taking action as the world falls apart around them.
“We’re catatonic, looking for something new,” Keely wails on “Catatonic,” sounding like a football coach trying to rally a team of seniors still hung over from last night’s prom. Fortunately, Trail of Dead have a way of making themes resonate both lyrically and sonically, bolstering the lyrical frustration of “Catatonics” with spazzy guitar lines that evoke the persistent itch of a hard-to-reach rash. Throughout the record, this same theme of destructive inertia resurfaces over and over; on “Open Doors”, Keely laments the ways in which hardship nudges us all down the easiest, least effective routes, everyone “[w]aiting for the answer/Walking through open doors.”
Closer “Time and Time Again”, with its acoustic strums and surprisingly melodic bass line, is Lost Songs’ greatest departure, and maybe its greatest achievement. Instead of turning inward and clawing at the walls of his skull, Keely gives us a melancholy anecdote buoyed by resignation instead of rage. “Drifting through the crowd I saw you glancing away/Terrified to meet my eyes,” he sings, the plain fact of his failure uncharacteristically speaking for itself.
The one sad takeaway from “Time and Time Again” is that it doesn’t belong; that, no matter how well done, that kind of song on this kind of record – a record otherwise so consistently vicious – is destined to be known as the runt of the litter. Until Trail of Dead work up the courage for another, more thoroughly considered reinvention, they’ll be captive to their own insistence that you simply have to choose.
REVIEW: Night Moves’ debut full-length Colored Emotions
In this age of hybridized genre tag mania (proto-post-stoner-jam-metalcore, anyone?), it’s become easy for bands to lay claim to invention by slapping synths, reverb, drum machines, etc., on top of blasé retreads of well-worn forms. Amid the innovation inflation Continue reading “REVIEW: Night Moves’ debut full-length Colored Emotions”
REVIEW: Love This Giant
Crushed By the Giant
It’s not too farfetched to imagine that when David Byrne found himself in a studio recording Love This Giant (released September 11th) with the angelic, guitar shredding Annie Clark, he may have asked himself “Well, how did I get here?”
The two come from two different genres, two different generations, and two different devout followings. At surface level, the dots connecting the music of Clark’s moniker, St. Vincent, and Talking Heads’ former frontman David Byrne seem scarce.
However, the duo’s foundation for Love This Giant didn’t completely start from scratch. In 2010, Byrne and Clark actually collaborated on a less-than-impressive track for Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s score, Here Lies Love — now forgotten in the depths of mega-fans’ comprehensive music collections (with good reason).
Regardless, with their praised solo albums and collaborations ranging from Byrne’s works with Brian Eno to Clark’s notable heart-racing and body-warming INXS covers with Beck, both Byrne and Clark are deserved icons prolific in emphasizing their styles and talents with other musicians.
The thought of St. Vincent & David Byrne collaborating on an entire album seemed surprisingly sensible, and after the release of their single, “Who,” many fans assumed it likely that Love This Giant would be a hit.
“Who be my valentine?” Byrne asks between trumpet blows and drum beats on the catchy single and album open. With the Siren-like Clark seducing Byrne’s classically strained yet strong vocals strung across a melting pot of jazz melody and sleek guitar-playing, “Who” is by far the boldest, catchiest, and most well-received track on Love This Giant. The track introduces the album with the initial reaction that it will be the ideal collaboration — something incorporating the original qualities of both musicians, while allowing them to evolve in new ways.
But that is not the dynamic of Love This Giant. Despite the natural assumption after hearing “Who,” the album isn’t the result of the two musicians intertwining distinctive characteristics while breaking out of their comfort zone. Rather, it’s the result of two well-known and adored musicians abandoning their golden backgrounds for something chaotic and built of brass.
“Who’s this, inside of me?” Byrne shrieks midway through “Who,” kicking the track with a jolt of sudden passion and a foreshadowing the remainder of Love This Giant’s nature — Byrne and Clark’s unrecognizable soul possessed by a jazz spirit haunting their music with what sounds like a circus of brass directing a structure-less album.
Drastically different — as each song on the album is — “Who” transitions into the funky “Weekend In The Dust,” utilizing a sassy side of Clark’s vocals amongst what sounds regrettably similar to a high school marching band during practice. It’s an immediate step down from “Who,” even though it’s one of the more accessible and interesting tracks on Love This Giant.
Throughout the album, Clark’s vocals differentiate expansively. Ranging from the spunky, funk style in “Weekend In The Dust” to a pitch and tone only suitable for a Disney princess on the tracks “Optimist” and “The Forest Awakes,” Clark comes off as both flat and schizophrenic.
Clark’s vocals aren’t the only schizophrenic aspect of Love This Giant — the whole album is overwhelmingly hectic with sudden transitions and high highs barely balancing low lows. More is less for Love This Giant; perhaps with use of steadier transition, loyalty to style, and a more polished cornucopia of brass, it could have been a culturally important album.
It seems unlikely that many musicians would refuse working with the talents of Byrne and Clark. The amateurish brass on Love This Giant would have been completely avoidable with the help of more skilled trumpet, trombone, saxophone, and horn players. If the duo had approached a musician like Beirut’s Zach Condon, who has a pristine talent in the realm of brass, the genre shift could have been an evolutionary milestone for the artists. But as symbolized by the track “I Am An Ape,” Byrne and Clark didn’t quite evolve with the shift of genre — they regressed.
It’s really hard to love a giant too big to notice that it let two idols fall flat. Combining a new and an older icon, Love This Giant had high potential to be a timeless album weaving together the sounds of two generations. Instead, Byrne and Clark created something so busy and identity-confused that its emotion and meaning are lost.
REVIEW: Sick/Sea’s debut album Moral Compass
Self-defined “jazzy rockers” Sick/Sea will be releasing their first album, Moral Compass, on the 16th of next month.
Moral Compass feels like an extended juxtaposition—an album with a resonating youthful lyrical basis, and yet a definitive level of harshness/roughness in its melodies and overall sound.
The childlike nature of the album is ever present and emphasized when evaluating the track titles. The names of the five songs on the upcoming release are “Parasite”, “Robot”, “Master Splinter”, “Mermaid”, and “Blinked.” Many of the stories told in the lyrics are based on childhood novels like Treasure Island. Their love of youthful fiction resonates loudly throughout the lyrics of each of the five tracks on Moral Compass.
Yet each of these tracks carries consistent dark melodies covered in heavy vocal echoing and alterations to original sound. When comparing Sick/Sea’s live videos with the sound from this album, it is difficult to recognize that they are the same musicians. Lead singer Audrey Scott’s enticing, raw sound is masked by the heaviness of the recording reverb on Moral Compass. Despite their deep Texan roots, Sick/Sea avoids the clichéd country sounds of their home state for a more trending, indie vibe with bluesy vocals.
Audrey is accompanied by her brother, Cameron Scott. Cameron adds original and energetic drumming to the dynamic sound of Sick/Sea. The base guitarist sprinkles a certain level of jazzy rhythm to the overall vibe of the album (although Sick/Sea is still defined more by their harder indie rock sound).
This debut album, produced by Atlanta-based recording company Autumn + Color, has a fairly cohesive sound but lacks a definitive originality that keeps toes tapping. On the other hand, the track titled “Mermaid” has a catchy chorus and a more seasoned rhythm.
To promote the release of Moral Compass, Sick/Sea will be heading off on an American tour beginning on the 20th in Chicago, Illinois. Live footage of Sick/Sea shows the band’s wider range and serious potential in the music industry. By taking away some of the heavy recording sounds, the true promise and talent on Moral Compass may be able to ring more true.
Sick/Sea’s awaited debut album feels like an impressive first step in a long artistic journey. While Moral Compass’s recording may alter some of the original musical talent, it represents a band that is cohesive and, most importantly, young at heart.
REVIEW: Grievances and Quiet Hands split
I got a dual split record for you guys, and between Grievances and Quiet Hands, this is some hard and extreme punk. Grievances’ home state is Georgia, and they’ve been kickin’ it for about a year now. They are currently secluded away and generously writing more for you listeners. Quiet Hands is from Gulfport, Missouri. Judging from the date they joined Facebook, they’ve been around for about two years.
On to the album- the two bands recently released a split in June, and you should check it out- granted it’s a little rough, but it definitely has potential. Grievances’ recording is a little cleaner; the standout song is “To Kill a Titan” (they have the first three songs on the album). I giggled a bit to the outro of “Occupy the Ocean”… the excerpt states “They don’t give a f*ck about you… they don’t give a f*ck about you/ They don’t care about you at all, at all… At all… and nobody seems to notice/ Nobody seems to care.” For those of you who didn’t get it, the excerpt is a distorted clip from “American Dream”, a speech by George Carlin.
Quiet Hands has the next four tracks, and the recordings are a little more raw. They are all relatively short, except for the last song, “But It’s Far From Over”, which starts off slow, melodic, and calm, then gets heavy, (I love it when bands do that), and then finally fades out quietly. “Now It’s Time” has some great guitar riffs and harmonies, and it feeds into “But It’s Far From Over”, (put the two song names together…could this be a statement?). After listening to this EP, I do have to say that I wish the tracks weren’t so muddy. They have some great potential in their music- all it needs is a little spitshine.
Both bands stem from each other (which makes sense for a split album). How this dual album came to be and how these guys met each other, I couldn’t tell you. Yet they both ended up under Divine Mother Recordings. Both bands have heavy, heavy guitars and blast beat drums in their songs, along with some br00tal screamz. If you can handle the raw quality of these tracks, you should give them a listen.