The Post-Rockist

The Twilight Sad - Walking For Two Hours
(from Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters)

Rumor has it, when Scottish band the Twilight Sad went down to Brighton, UK to meet with their label reps at Fat Cat Records, they took the piss out of everyone’s southern accent. It’s hard to believe they meant it maliciously. The affective souls responsible for Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters wouldn’t offend, would they? Of course not. But, at the same time, don’t take these lads as creampuffs just because their band name suggests a night in with red wine and Morrissey on the hi-fi accompanied by more than a few tears. The Twilight Sad can run with any crowd, and they will surely please people all over the indie spectrum. They’ve certainly pleased this Post-Rockist contributor.

Part way through opener “Cold Days From The Birdhouse” their Achilles heel/ace in the hole is revealed: James Graham’s voice. More specifically, it is his accent that shocks. With one of the thicker sung Scottish accents in pop music, it’s distracting to say the very least. It may also be that one extra idiosyncrasy that launches this band to superstardom! Well…that’s not going to happen. But, there’s no denying that what lies just beneath the thick Scottish brogue is a powerful set of pipes well-equipped to belt it out, even over the frequently cacophonic guitars and equally aggressive rhythm section. But, don’t get cocky on us, Mr. Graham: your vocals aren’t that sexy. The album feels a bit sluggish when it relies too heavily on his vocals. Songs such as “Last Year’s Rain Didn’t Fall Quite So Hard,” which is built around a repeated vocal line, are a bit aimless and boring. But, in defense of The Twilight Sad, shame on any listener who expected something spine-tingling or exciting from a song titled “Last Year’s Rain Didn’t Fall Quite So Hard.”

That said, the album is a very solid debut with a lot more highs than lows. The Twilight Sad will surely draw comparisons to fellow Scots Mogwai, or, I think even more appropriately, to Texans Lift to Experience. But, unlike these classic post-rock groups, the order of the day isn’t dynamics; it’s complements. Rather than drafting every song around the quiet/loud dynamic, the Twilight Sad complement their loudest, most distorted moments with a powerful, hooky vocal line here, a humming accordion there. These little touches make the louder moments more unpredictable, the quieter moments more memorable. Even as “Walking For Two Hours” opens with guitar tones that swing back and forth, seemingly with reckless abandon, it’s all done to a melody that wouldn’t sound out of place on Ride’s Nowhere. At other times, given the urgency captured in both Graham’s howling messages and the frenzied percussion, they sound reminiscent of the urban paranoia of New Yorkers like Interpol or Longwave. But, in a very Scottish way.

And, since there is no better place to insert this comment, here’s a sidebar. Though I haven’t been able to get confirmation on this point, I am quite certain that track two, “That Summer, At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy,” is a reference to Rob Reiner’s 1986 classic Stand By Me (or possibly Stephen King’s novella “The Body,” on which the film is based). But, instead of telling us their story about a fat kid named Vern and a dead kid name Ray Brower, the Twilight Sad deliver a tale of about the clash of everyday disappointments and affirmations. And they prove convincingly that a row of effects pedals and an accordion make for better storytellers than Richard Dreyfuss.

-Posted by E. Kula

The Skygreen Leopards
Disciples of California
[Jagjaguwar; 2006] 

In 2001, Bar/None re-released some obscure recordings made in a grade school gymnasium with the key performers being…grade schoolers.  The Langley Schools Music Project captures nine to twelve year old children singing their hearts out to some of the best pop music of the 1960s and 1970s and showing the cynics among us how purely joyful pop music can be.  Of course, you have to suspend cynicism to take pleasure in the out-of-key hollering, the mistimed percussion, and the clumsily collided clave sticks.  But they’re children.  In 2006, Jagjaguwar asks us to enjoy playful warbling, mistimed percussion, and clumsy piano…from grown men.  Grown Men!  The Skygreen Leopards, formed around core duo Glenn Donaldson and Donovan Quinn, really put the Post-Rockist ethos of eschewing music snobbery to the test.  Or, perhaps not.  Is their rhythmically sparse and lyrically eccentric Disciples of California really an experimental folk record that caters to snobs?  It is, after all, on Jagjaguwar.  I say no.  Disciples of California, much like those wide-eyed Canadian children, really taps into the core of pop music: simple songs that make you smile.

Last year, The Skygreen Leopards released a six track EP, Jehovah Surrender, and every track was characterized by squalls of blissfully distorted guitars that practically poured out of the speakers.  It was truly some of the best effects work I’ve heard in quite some time.  So, on first listen, Disciples of California is unexpected.  It’s largely an acoustic affair, and excessively lo-fi to the point that one must wonder if those scrappy Canadian tikes had superior recording facilities.  It is rhythmically sparse with several songs pulling their structure solely from lazily plucked guitars.  Bass lines lumber along with no urgency and nothing about the album would lead us to believe that the Leopards are dedicated to keeping time.  The similarities between this and The Langley Schools’ recordings are numerous: carefree timing, casual recording, but above all an unabashed, childlike enjoyment of pretty, sunny pop melodies.  The lack of complexity in both arrangements and melodies doesn’t take anything away from the music.  Oddly, it is the unvarnished quality that reminds me of the unrestrained enjoyment that can be had when stripping pop music down to its basics.

Though simple, Disciples of California captures some unique beauty that Canadian school children just can’t.  However, this inability is less because of their age and more because of their nationality.  This album radiates Californian charm and, though unique, could easily be called new Americana.  Like The Beachwood Sparks’ or The Byrds’ best moments, the acoustic guitars chime rather than strum. Electric guitars are gentle and reverberate above the acoustics rather than abrasively piercing the moment.  “Egyptian Circus” and “Jesus Was Californian” are perfect examples of these crisp, chiming guitars that soften the longer they reverberate, yielding neither to structured timing nor strict tempo.

Disciples of California is strangely simple.  It is stripped down, fanciful, and unrefined.  Its simplicity doesn’t provide any hiding spaces for the Leopards to conceal their enthusiasm for a pure Californian pop song.  Its stalled and lazy tempo can’t put the breaks on its reverberating charm.  Its lack of complexity in both arrangements and melodies allow for The Skygreen Leopards to sing their hearts out in their own distinctive way.

The Skygreen Leopards - Disciples of California (from Disciples of California)

-Posted by E. Kula

Mouse on Mars
Varcharz
[Ipecac Recordings; 2006]

The least frivolous record ever…like a hard electronic spanking.

Germans have never been regarded as the most playful or jocular people.  They have developed a reputation that is easily lampooned as ill-tempered drill sergeants mixed with androgynous perversion as seen on “Sprockets.”  One need only briefly glance at the photos I took on my trip to the Beate Uhse Erotic Museum in Berlin to see what I’m talking about.  To me, and countless other non-Deutsche, that is what we think of when we think of Germans. Varcharz isn’t going to do anything to change that perception. 

On their latest release, Mouse on Mars means business.  Serious Fucking Business.  This is quite possibly the least playful and least jocular album of the year.  Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner have put together a snarling beast of an album.  And it is good…really good.  According to the Ipecac Recordings website, Varcharz has its foundation in the same recording sessions the resulted in 2004’s Radical Connector.  This is almost impossible to believe.  Varcharz is no dance album.  Gone are the overtly pop songs and with cleverly manipulated vocals, replaced by extremely aggressive and wildly experimental electronic rock.  The attitude change between albums is even reflected in the language.  While Radical Connector boasts song titles like “Detected Beats” and “Send Me Shivers,” this violence that is Varcharz includes “skik” and “igoegowhygowego.”  Even the song titles mirror that uniquely German trait of ill-tempered perversion. 

The majority of Varcharz is a mix of experimental IDM-style electronics and the more chaotic side of post-rock.  Grainy sounds, hissing backgrounds, and jolting beats rampage along through each song, usually getting more intense as the song builds as if the different components are fighting each other.  But, the knock-blow never comes.  These songs don’t collapse into cacophony as if noise triumphed over rhythm or vice versa.  Rather, noise and rhythm interact with each other and everything in the song mutates.  Beats become tonal, melodies become syncopated and the whole songs changes complexion.  So, while the original timing or melodic phrasing endures, it only exists under a thousand tiny distortions.  Perhaps the standout example of this transformation occurs in “bertney.”  It begins with a series of frantic and impatient beats, but as you listen these staccato noises actually spell out a hummable melody.  These skittering beats continue, with the same melody, but as the song evolves, melody becomes the property of hazy squalls of noise with almost no rhythmic structure.  The whole of Varcharz is marked by these instances of distortion and variation.  The most amazing part of this feat is that Mouse on Mars is able to deliver these subtle variations in a way that isn’t subtle at all.  It’s just too extreme and intense to be subtle…or to give a fuck about subtlety.

Leave it to the Germans to create this music.  Rock and electronic music perverted to its very core.

{Visit the Mouse on Mars home page.  Or, pre-order Varcharz today.}

-Posted by E. Kula

On their fourth album, Martyn Leaper and company return with a sound that, thankfully, can be identified as a distant cousin of earlier Minders’ records.  Call it maturing, re-inventing, or gracefully aging, but The Minders are definitely not the same band that their fans have come to love. It’s a Bright Guilty World shows The Minders to be a band that has outgrown their earlier warm, fuzzy, child-like exuberance and embraced a delightfully refined, albeit less exciting, pop sound. 

A majority of this album bounces along at roughly the same tempo, and Leaper rarely ventures into the minor key, but these musical consistencies avoid boring the listener.  Each song is endowed with a fairly distinct melodic hook, a fairly unique interplay of male-female vocals, and a fairly creative arrangement that work well with the Minders seemingly-official tempo.  And, all these elements lead to…a fair pop album.

(Continued)