The Pack A.D. - Tintype

My Review here:
The Pack A.D. - Tintype

3: Ecstatic Sunshine - Way

I have made a habit over the past week of listening to this album first thing in the morning. Ringing picked notes, chilly and clear, the *plck* of plectrums against tight strings, shifting bodies of static and digital manipulation, and finally calm repetition and tonal progressions. It is part of my morning ablutions, I go into Way with groggy eyes and mind, still living in my dreams and yesterday, and enter out the other side fresh, with my inner self scorified and ready for the day.

The dudes in Ecstatic Sunshine come from Baltimore, Maryland in the US, and they were originally a duo that played frantic double guitar workouts, see this description. For this year’s Way, the guys added an electrics manipulator to create a threesome, with one of the original members saying this is his last album with the band. Way certainly seems different to their previous album, (which I haven’t heard, all I know about it comes from Darnielle’s piece up there), somehow calmer and more reflective, and taking a completely different tact as with middle track ‘Herrons’, which features electronic staticy noise over the effects laden guitar/s. It’s not really a great comparison in the way this album feels, but I can’t help but think of last year’s Parts & Labor album Mapmaker, dollops of electronics mixed in with guitars. ‘Perrier’ is 10 minutes long and builds on those themes already put forward in the album, but also manages to synthesize pretty plucking, noisy but melodious electronics and an eventual ecstatic peak of harmony.

Anyway, I’m glad that when I read that Dusted review of this album that I listened to the sample track as I read along, because it gave me the impetus to check out this cool album. Since this release I think another electronics guy has joined the group, so it should be interesting to see where they go with it.

Links
Ecstatic Sunshine [myspace]

TLOBF: Wooden Shjips - Vol. 1

My review here:

Wooden Shjips - Vol. 1

TLOBF: Thank You - Terrible Two

Whoops, I messed up the title on the original post at TLOBF, it should be 'Terrible'. Though the more I say it, the more I think Terrbile should be a word, perhaps it can mean "spelling mistake in an album review". My review here:

Thank You - Terrible Two

Sandi Thom, Punks, Hippies And Interpretations

Now, Sandi Thom’s ‘I Wish I was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair)’, (bottom of this post), gets a lot of flak, for being an annoyingly earnest song, for being so widely praised/consumed and for supposedly misunderstanding and appropriating the cultural movement of punk. But is there a little more to it?

Consider what she is saying, she brings together two images in the chorus and focus of the song, a punk and a hippie (‘flowers in my hair’). Now, just about everyone seems to go “lol, she is saying hippies and punks are the same, what a stupid bitch, lol”, but if you think about it, there are similarities in the ideological aspects of being a hippie and a punk. Hippies were about having a good time and getting high, it’s true, but there was other stuff in there too, like the ideas of creating a better society, whether that is through communes where everyone is connected and a part of a community, or through trying to stop atrocities inflicted upon other peoples as in the Vietnam War protests, and the anti nuclear and free press movements. Those are the things that are relevant here, because punk shares some of these ideas. There were big sides to punk that closely related to Anarchism and the empowerment of the people, to trying to create a better or different society than the one that existed, the anti racism gigs, and the creation of a new community for people who felt alienated and shunned by the mainstream. Of course, as with the hippies, there were other parts to punk, which don’t match up, the nihilism, the destructive spirit (which directly opposes hippie’s spiritual ideas of rebirth and creation), and the neo-Nazi, xenophobic aspects. But there is an awful lot of common ground to be found. It’s the facets that encourage and foster empowerment that might be found in Sandi Thom’s song. And, I ask you, what is more fucking punk rock than wanting to be who you are, and if that entails wearing flowers in your hair even though you are in the masculine realm of punk, then that’s what you do, fuck what anyone else thinks about it, you are expressing yourself. Another thing to note would be the existence of the Velvet Underground and The Stooges around the song’s stated time period of ‘69’, both forefathers of punk or even the first punk bands to exist, so Thom might be making reference to punk’s initial existence. Apart from all this murky ideological and historical supposings, the track has a really interesting form, the bashing percussion beating all the way through the song, the a-capella singing, and various other things, certainly not a typical pop song in that regard, let alone a chart-topping one.

But. She might well be misunderstanding and stupidly appropriating all these ideas, they might even be entirely coincidental. Lines like ‘ignorance could still be bliss’ do not inspire confidence, clearly she is yearning for a simpler time, perhaps it is the hippie aspect, where the Man was wrong, and you have to stand up to Him. Whereas the punk era had a lot more ambiguous personal struggles, and the Man was still there, sure, but the punks realized that they too were made with the same mould as the Man. Worshipping naivety isn’t a fulfilling scene. The references to ‘anarchism’, you feel, may be less about the social-political idea of tearing everything down and starting again, and more about name-checking the Sex Pistol’s song without any other deeper meaning. Plus she is signed to RCA, so she must be a corporate shill, despite her supposedly DIY beginnings. The song also trades in the awful cultural trend of nostalgia worshipping, when the ‘media couldn’t buy your soul’, ‘not everyone drove a car’, ‘kids were wearing hand-me-downs’, and etcetera. Maybe go watch Ashes To Ashes, laugh at Rickrolling, prattle on about Madonna, and watch 80s movies with your rose-tinted glasses, instead of blaring stupidity at us.

So, maybe there is, and maybe there isn’t more to this song, how conclusive!

2: Caribou - The Milk Of Human Kindness

So, The Milk Of Human Kindness has that trademark technicolour wonderland sound to it that Up In Flames had, a warm rush of current pulling you out to sea. Using (perfectly) imperfect warm production and recording, everything has a slightly fuzzy edge, from the keyboard notes to the drumming to Snaith’s voice, and we have another summer album on our hands. There is a slight scaling back of the elation that is found on Up In Flames, but an almost as enjoyable calmness threads through The Milk Of Human Kindness. There are deviations, or rather expansions, that are followed. Sometimes structure takes a back seat, a melody that you can’t quite neatly describe flows outwards towards the horizon, with the underpinning pops, percussion taps and note tinkles almost becoming inconsequential in scale as the track stretches on. I would be lying if I said my attention didn’t sometimes waver during these parts, but I found it was as much a matter of finding the right situation and time to experience the album and connect with it’s style as anything. We find shorter tracks here as well that act as tension releasers, hip-hop informed percussion pulling you through by your t-shirt to the next part of the album, or clearly focused under a minute tonal songs which also have a similar effect. I suppose it’s unsurprising that Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) is good friends with Snaith, there are definite similarities in style, and I was definitely struck during one of those instrumental hip-hop styled tracks by that similarity, it sounded kinda like ‘As Serious As Your Life’ off of Four Tet’s Rounds. I will really enjoy spinning this album during the summer, and maybe I’ll be adding Caribou’s next album, 2007’s Andorra, to The Album-A-Week Project before the summer’s out.

1: Two Gallants - What The Toll Tells

Two Gallants’ What The Toll Tells is a bit of a disappointment to me. The Throes had youthful abandon, with a concentrated focus on story and using popular reference points, (blues, country, folk), in a non-typical way. There was a sense of fun underneath the churning, serious surface of their debut, as if the guys were revelling in recreating their favourite music. But WTTT seems to lack that in some way, songs stretch out past 9 mins in a couple of cases, ideas stretched beyond their worth. All in service of the stories they are telling, I suppose, but that doesn’t really make me want to carry on listening, especially when the instrumentation can be so dour. A more brittle feeling comes from these songs, I guess.

But, I shall persevere with it, give it more time to draw me in and we’ll see how it goes, hopefully I can post some more in depth thoughts in the future.

The Album-A-Week Project info here