Sorry, angels is in a bit of an unannounced vacation mode just now—as much as I tried this year, I just couldn’t avoid the annual August drought. I’ll be back at the top of September.
Archive for August, 2007
Reloading
Brunettes
Small Town Crew
Structure and Cosmetics (2007)
A more melancholy state of mind for New Zealand’s Brunettes, whose new album Structure and Cosmetics is out now in North America and the home territory. The more expressive palette of “Small Town Crew” still hints at the cutesy pop foundations of older releases—it’s always going to be difficult to downplay the undeniably twee qualities of Heather Manfield’s voice—but takes a more subtle approach from the usual bubblegum shenanigans of older favourites. More evidence is present on the band’s MySpace, where half the album is available for your perusal. “Brunettes Against Bubblegum Youth,” a live staple you might better know as “B.A.B.Y” (and if you don’t, hunt down the band’s live set from this year’s SXSW), sounds as though the vocals were recorded in an old school gymnasium—a very different feeling from the immediacy of the onstage version. “Her Hairagami Set,” the first single from the album, is also a bit less straightfoward.
But lest you think the Brunettes have taken a hard left on the new album, there are two things you should know. First, the slightly more bittersweet textures work really well, and aren’t all that different from the less upbeat moments on Mars Loves Venus. And if various songs on the album frustrate slightly—there seem to be a lot of vocal effects this time around—it’s only because both Mansfield and Jonathan Bree have such unique voices that you don’t really want to hear them under layers of reverb. Second, and more important: the Brunettes haven’t lost their sense of whimsy. “Stereo (Mono Mono)” brings back the cute interplay between the two singers for a spell, and “Obligatory Road Song” is a fun little number that’s sure to get feet shuffling when the band returns to North America for a full tour later this month.
Prolapse
Tina, This is Matthew Stone
Pointless Walks to Dismal Places (1994)
Having only discovered Prolapse just as they were drifting apart, I only read about the legendary on-stage fights and screaming matches that made up the core of the band’s live appeal. Though singers Linda Steelyard and Mick Derrick were, by all accounts, decently good friends and even dated for a while, you’d be forgiven for thinking they hated each other at points during the band’s career. Take, for example, “Tina, This is Matthew Stone,” the final track off Prolapse’s first album. Though the album itself doesn’t stand out as brightly as The Italian Flag, all is redeemed once the last track hits. For seven minutes you get to hear Derrick and Steelyard get very shouty and nasty with one another, and depending on your temperament you’ll either find the song horribly uncomfortable or awe-inspiring.
And if you’re one of those twisted individuals that thinks of this song as one of the greatest duets ever made? I’d like to get to know you, because you obviously have impeccable taste.
Rilo Kiley
The Moneymaker
Under the Blacklight (2007)
The last time we talked about Jenny Lewis, it was to ask whether she had the brass to actually stand behind her music—her video for “Rise Up With Fists!!” perhaps indicating otherwise. Well, Rilo Kiley’s gearing up for their next album, and it appears Lewis has put on her serious shoes this time. The lead single off Under the Blacklight, “The Moneymaker,” is an ode to Hollywood’s raunchier side, and is the clearest indication yet that Lewis and her band are no longer interested in the twenty-something slice-of-life portraits that filled The Execution of All Things. And though the video itself is set in a porn shop and features Lewis cavorting about in a glitzy gold top and wielding a lovely leather whip, it seems as though Rilo Kiley’s aiming for something past sexual innuendo.
It doesn’t take a genius to divine this, though; only a cursory viewing of the full-length music video, which runs about thirteen minutes. Before we get to the actual video, Rilo Kiley give us ten minutes of audition interviews with the other principal actors, who all happen to be porn stars. The three who make the cut—Hailey Young, Tommy Gunn and Faye Runaway—are incidental players in the music video, but as far as the band is concerned they’re very much the focus here. We get insights into the business and the lives of porn stars, with the general idea being one of “hey, did you know that porn stars are people too?”
Well, yeah, actually, we kinda did. And though it’s neat to meet the man who starred in the most expensive porn film ever made, you do get the sense that Rilo Kiley are trying for more shock value than they ultimately get out of the proceedings. Now that pornography is practically a mainstream consideration, examinations of the industry are well beyond the old-school made-for-TV “I was a Playboy centerfold” movies of yesteryear. In that sense Lewis and company are treading old ground.
As for the song itself, it’ll definitely have its detractors—it’s a departure from the usually literate, quirky sound Rilo Kiley was known for. But at the same time, you knew “The Moneymaker” was coming; More Adventurous was practically a Warner Brothers release, after all, and the new album will drop even the Brute/Beaute pretense of being on a boutique label. Lewis and Sennett are going big, whether you like it or not, and let’s be honest: if they’re going to drop the indie schtick anyways, better it be with engaging material like “The Moneymaker.” You can taste the sleaze coming off the guitar licks, and even if it’s by no means authentic it’s a decent enough show.
I don’t think the single is going to stick like good singles should, despite the porn star gambit. What it will do is keep Lewis in the spotlight and remind people she’s not just a faux-country singer; she’s got other things on her mind. For now, we’ll accept Rilo Kiley’s return for what it is, and in the meantime try not to remind them that only three years ago they were talking about chimps “deploying more troops than a salt shaker.” Talk about risqué.
Sarah Harmer
Lodestar
You Were Here (2000)
Welcome to the final long weekend of the summer, which for many people will be the last big trip to the cottage or cabin in the woods or just “anywhere but here”—an escape to somewhere quiet, relaxing, and far, far away. Of course, for those of us without such remote hideaways, we make do with what we’ve got. And it’s for those people that I bring what I think is Sarah Harmer’s best song to date.
Back before her first album got picked up by Universal Canada and she became a household name, Sarah Harmer was merely the lead singer of the mostly defunct Weeping Tile. For the teenagers who’d listened to the Kingston band throughout most of the 90s, Weeping Tile was one of those Canadian alt-rock combos that made few waves on a national scale but garnered its own small following. Luther Wright went on to form his own alt-country band, Luther Wright and the Wrongs; meanwhile Harmer decided she’d strike out on her own. Her first release was an album of covers recorded for her father, Songs for Clem. Released as an afterthought after friends told her it was actually quite good, Songs for Clem eventually led Harmer to try her hand at an album of her own material.
In the summer of 2000, Harmer announced on her website that she’d finished You Were Here. She was hoping a couple of stores would carry it, but in the meantime you could send her $15 and she’d mail you a copy. I figured it’d be a lot easier to mail her a cheque than wait for a Toronto store to carry the album, so I sent out my request and received in return a CD with an inkjet-printed cover illustration and a plain pink CD with the tracklist printed in purple. That album, along with a bunch of other CDs, came with me to a friend’s cottage up by Lake Erie, where we celebrated the death of our petty high school dramas and stared unflinchingly into the abyss of our impending university careers.
It’s there that I discovered just how magnificent “Coffee Stain” sounded when accompanied by the sound of waves splashing on the beach in the early afternoon; how “Around This Corner” livened up a bright, sunny morning spent lazily reading; and how “Lodestar” could bring you out of the deepest funk and tell you everything was going to be alright. You Were Here signifies, for me, that one week I spent pretending the world was nothing but deck chairs, sand, and calm water out to the horizon.
Not long after I returned from that trip, I packed all my things and moved to Kingston to start university (and perhaps find Tom’s Shoe Repair, the store that inspired a Weeping Tile song of the same name). Not long after I got there, Universal announced that because of the massive response to Harmer’s album, they would give You Were Here a wide release, and just like that you didn’t have to worry about finding it in stores any more. And though you’ll be hard-pressed to find the quaint, partially handcrafted album I hold dear, all of You Were Here’s charms remain intact on the glossy-booklet Universal version.
And thus endeth a month of songs with trumpets. Yes, a whole month. Did you notice?