|
This
Bird Has Flown
Augie March
Strange
Bird (SpinArt)
It’s both fitting and unfortunate that Australian quintet
Augie March chose to title their stateside debut album Strange
Bird (it’s their second LP overall). True, this is a band
who suck the musical marrow from the tired old bones of classic
pop, folk, and country; their pastures shimmer with droplets
of trumpets and violins. Surely, there are a great many vaguely
rustic, bookish couplets to be discovered within the expansive
lyric booklet (an “index of first lines” is included, which
suggests that we’re dealing with a bunch of well-read wiseasses
here). But, for all the great references (both musical and
historical), this bird, while quite strange and occasionally
very beautiful, is not particularly interesting in whole.
The first half of Strange Bird, in which Augie March’s
stylistic gamut reveals itself one song at a time, is strong
enough to warrant great praise. “The Vineyard” lumbers like
a ’luded, half-speed XTC, revolving ’round a simple melody
and juicing things up with orchestral pomp and group vocals.
“This Train Will Be Taking No Passengers” heaves along with
all the coal-engine-fueled locomotion of its titular object;
“Song in the Key of Chance” is a blustery sea chantey sung
from a barstool pulpit, like the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne
fronting the Bad Seeds. “Little Wonder” and “The Night Is
a Blackbird” are hair-on-back-of-neck-raisingly lovely, evoking
vintage Bee Gees and Nick Drake. Although, at first aural
instinct, it might seem that the tag of Lips-knockoff would
be appropriate, Augie March are more directly descended from
the bygone-era slack-rock set (Pavement, Radar Bros), and
it’s the “If you don’t get it, too bad” spirit that carries
the wonderful first act.
The act grows old as the album progresses, however: The only
useful cuts on side two are the Richard Thompson-via-Will
Oldham waltz “Sunstroke House” and the first 15 seconds of
“Addle Brains,” which, looped, would make a great De La Soul
track (melt down the remaining five minutes for scrap, though).
There’s a picaresque quality to much of singer-guitarist Glenn
Richards’ lyric writing, in line with the Saul Bellow novel
from which the band take their name, but it comes off as grad-school-cred-building
vocabular masturbation, and it can be inaccessible to a fault.
By its tail end, Strange Bird begins to sound like
a book on tape with a well-constructed music bed. See, the
lyrics are often verbose to the point of no entry, and without
strong melodic movement, they’re just words, and words are
all they have to take our hearts away. And come on, “The Night
Is a Blackbird”? That’s as crap a metaphor as ever there has
been. OK, that’s a cheap shot, since the song sharply outs
itself as one of the more concise narratives in the collection,
but the truth of the matter is that if these cats had managed
to think up melodies half as interesting as lines like “They
married, a dandy and a back alley tough, on the foreshore
while kids in the needling rough, stayed low, in, and laid
till they’d had enough of the somersaulting hot roll of revolting
September,” this Bird truly could have soared.
—John
Brodeur
Fear
Factory
Archetype
(Liquid 8)
The musicians have tremendous musical prowess, yet it’s as
if a vital stone remains missing from the olde foundation,
one that exposes the band to all sorts of corrosive elements
and erosion. Fear Factory have always been about infusing
blunt-force riffage with snarfy synthesizers and Burton Bell’s
ethereal, goth-style vocals. What do I know about goth? Nothing,
but I know a guy who listens to Sisters of Mercy when I hear
him. If you already love the band, chances are you will like
Archetype. And I am concerned. The band claim to be
the first and the best at what they do, but I can never fully
grasp exactly what “it” is, aside from slightly unnerving
in a “Where is that damn knocking coming from?” manner.
The outstanding themes of the disc are wrapped in very well-worn
analogies (likening corporate America’s infectious, murderous
growth to clinical and pathological reproduction techniques
in “Corporate Cloning,” for example), yet thankfully the topic
matter remains relevant and sometimes engaging. Sometimes
a little tired, too. “Slave Labor” is the song all bands write
sooner or later about the recording industry. The insolent
“Archetype,” on the other hand, seems to make a more complex
request of the listener, the interior angles not so readily
apparent. In it, vocalist Burton Bell’s seemingly simple command
to “open your eyes!” appears to reference the Jungian archetypes,
those shared tenets of universal unconscious that behave according
to the same laws throughout human history. If the mind is
merely a subdirectory of the root directory, Bell calls for
the courage to look past our unique historical experience
toward universal patterns to gain greater knowledge of self.
What is interesting is that, having drawn attention to the
phenomenon, it becomes clear that each song—be it about discrimination,
warfare or technology—steadfastly assesses the underlying
archetypal behaviors. And that’s pretty freakin’ cool, especially
if you care to read even further into Jung’s theories on psyche
and symbolism. But the musical grids traversed by the band
do precious little to permanently stamp such ideas on the
brain and in the gut in a meaningful way, although I must
admit that (after 24 listens) Archetype would be slightly
more approachable than I originally held, if not for one powerful
exception.
Ever since Louie Bellson added an additional bass drum to
his jazz kit in the late 1930s, there have been legions of
men (especially in metal, of course) who became compelled
to overpower any remnant of musical taste by galloping out
scores of complex, ridiculous bass drum runs. I say “men”
because I have never heard a woman overplay. Go figure. Regardless,
Raymond Herrera—painfully talented, a primary Fear Factory
songwriter and technically a challenge to drummers in any
genre—is guilty of murder here. The man uses his feet to stamp
out any last vestige of pure rock goodness by chasing down
the beat like it was the man with the eye patch who killed
his little sister. There is absolutely no need
to precisely mimic Christian Olde Wolbers’ tooth-rattling,
Gatlin Gun guitar work (the former bassist replaces Dino Cazares
in that capacity on this CD), as if it were a heavy metal
game of Simon. Horribly loud in the mix, the drums effectively
kill the structural integrity of almost every composition.
They leave the music without a heartbeat, that pulsing, earthy
cadence that is the giver of life. They completely destroy
songs like “Slave Labor,” giving the musical space no breadth,
no texture; it’s like listening to an assembly line sealing
a 24-count box of cream cheese. When I’m in the mood for heavy
sport, I want to listen to someone destroying something,
not manufacturing it. Now, we can argue about construction
and deconstruction all you want, but no matter. The drums
just aren’t the most essential piece to the archetypal puzzle.
Speaking of necessity and the lack thereof, there’s also a
cover of Nirvana’s “School” here, but all it really makes
you want to do is go and pull out Bleach and listen
to the original.
—Bill
Ketzer
Mount
Analog
New
Skin (Film Guerrero)
Musician and producer Tucker Martine brought forth the first
Mount Analog disc in 1997, created primarily from compositions
he’d created for a traditional Japanese dance. Since then
he’s worked with artists as varied as Sam Rivers and Modest
Mouse. While empowered by his vision and direction, New
Skin delights in the surprise twists and discoveries that
come from collaborating with others. Here he works with such
Seattle-area neighbors as Bill Frisell and Fred Chalenor,
and the results move fluidly between evocative atmospherics,
hops around the globe, soulful jazz grooves, and anything
else that may’ve wandered into the fold. The 11 instrumental
pieces range in length from under a minute to nearly six,
and their relative brevity allows the individual character
of individual tracks to bump into one another, creating their
own sets of sparks, tensions, and release. From “Night Night”
and its minimalist piano figures embedded in fragile electronic
washes, to the railroad screeches and field recordings giving
way to a celebratory rave-up in “Freeze Green,” the contrasting
juxtopositions make New Skin one unified and full album
experience. It’s at once modernist and organic, the studio
being an important tool, but not the defining element.
—David
Greenberger
|
Columns
& Opinions
