Back in the days when Kill Rock Stars had Sleater-Kinney and Elliott Smith, and the Decemberists were just a figment of Colin Meloy’s imagination, label founder Slim Moon spun off a boutique label from KRS called 5 Rue Christine. The idea was Kill Rock Stars would be where all the normal indie rock stuff would live, while 5RC would be the label for the more “out there” stuff. For the most part, “out there” ended up meaning noisy, experimental rock and pop. XBXRX, Deerhoof, Hella and Need New Body have all put out albums on 5RC; Marnie Stern’s first album was supposed to be a 5RC release as well (and maybe still technically is—a lot of 5RC releases ended up being joint ones with Kill Rock Stars). When Moon left Kill Rock Stars a year and a half ago, 5 Rue Christine didn’t stick around much longer; it’s now in semi-retirement, much like Seattle label Up Records back in 2000 when co-founder Chris Takino died from leukaemia.

One of the label’s first releases was this one-off project from the late Mary Hansen of Stereolab, who’d gotten together with the Seattle band Hovercraft to form Schema. As an early indicator of 5RC’s mission, the band’s self-titled album was one of the quieter statements despite Hovercraft’s spacey noise-rock pedigree, but the album was unconventional and probably difficult to sell to the usual indie rock crowd—in other words, a direct hit. Some of Stereolab’s noodly synthesizer tendencies creep into the mix, and Hansen’s voice is quite recognizable (something few second vocalists can boast about). Anyone expecting another Stereolab, however, will be sorely disappointed: what we have here is waves of muted guitar feedback, relentless rhythmic loops, and songs that don’t really progress so much as fill the room for ten minutes like a fog before slowly dissipating.

Apparently, Hovercraft and Hansen were pleased enough with the collaboration that they had planned a second album and a tour. All that was cut short in late 2002 when Hansen was hit and killed while riding her bicycle. Hovercraft, for its part, may have seen Schema not as a side project but as an evolution; with Schema gone, Hovercraft seemed to disappear into the ether.

The Octopus Project is one of two bands to wow me unexpectedly with their live show this year. Though practically none of their songs have any vocals and there isn’t really a frontperson or obvious focus on stage, the Austin, Texas trio (augmented with an extra multi-instrumentalist on tour) are a flurry of flying limbs and joyous noise that definitely gets the heart racing—imagine if you were watching an Arcade Fire concert where no one could sing, and you’re in the same general ballpark. Hello, Avalanche is a different beast—you don’t get to see the flying limbs and the album doesn’t sound as if its various components could fly off at any point. That means the Octopus Project on record isn’t as freewheeling on record as they are on stage; what you get instead is a lot of insistent instrumental grooves and otherworldly soundscapes. With the euphoria somewhat muted, you have time to luxuriate in some of the finer details you just can’t hear very well in the live show.

Hello, Avalanche is the third proper album from the group, and based on the singles from previous albums it seems the Octopus Project have cut back slightly on the electronic content this time out. “Mmaj” and “I Saw the Bright Shinies” are the most overtly beat-driven songs here, but the group have done a fantastic job of making their electronic concoctions sound organic. Much of the credit goes to the surprisingly forceful and prominent roar of the guitars and the athletic drumming underpinning the whole album. But sometimes it’s the little details, like the glockenspiel on “Upmann” or the ghostly theremin on “Snow Tip Cap Mountain” that convince the most.

Considering the sheer number of balls the Octopus Project keep in the air on many of the tracks on Hello, Avalanche, it could’ve been easy for the whole enterprise to dissolve into a mess of noise and static, too complex and belaboured to elicit any real pleasure. But the band are very much fans of pop progressions and concise running times; no song passes five minutes and every track has an obvious payoff and a distinct character, avoiding the usual post-rock syndrome where moments of beauty punctuate long, ponderous sections of build-up and fall-off.

It’s weird how Hello, Avalanche isn’t quite as showy as the Octopus Project’s live show, and yet feels just as infused with energy, enthusiasm and sincerity. You can hear it in the gleefully bleepy keyboard tones of “Truck,” the propulsive drumming on “Upmann” and the strings that close out “Loud Murmuring.” And then, to close out the album, there’s “Queen,” the one song where the band drop the instrumental schtick and actually sing for the first time, almost as though the members of the band just wanted to drop in and say hi.

Hello!

“Oslo Skyline” sparkles with barely-contained spectacle, only to explode forth in the second half with a breathtaking orchestral attack. It’s like a fireworks show committed to tape, small blasts of perfection leading to a stunning climax full of starbursts and towering skyscrapers of light. Like many of the songs on What We Must, “Oslo Skyline” is full of occasion. Even without lyrics to guide the way, you can tell this isn’t a band interested in the mundane details; Jaga Jazzist is devoted to tidal waves of sound and soaring crescendos. Even the low-key songs instill a sense of anticipation of what’s just around the corner—the next firecracker is never long in coming.

Not having heard of the Octopus Project before last week, the hook I latched onto early one was Yvonne Lambert’s theremin, an instrument that rarely sees a whole lot of use on tour unless you count Alison Goldfrapp abusing her portable theremin while wearing a horse’s tail and a top hat. Or something along those lines. In the absence of vocals, Lambert’s mostly electronic contributions—in addition to the theremin, she also plays keyboards and glockenspiel—serve as the voice while the rest of the band serves as a foundation built out of hard-charging guitars and propulsive drums.

The Octopus Project are a tale of two bands: on stage, the emphasis is on exaggerating and embellishing the crescendos like so many waves crashing into the audience. They put on a lively performance that was just as much a joy to watch as it was to listen. Hello, Avalanche, the band’s latest album, seems the work of a different band; usually artists turn up the volume for the live show, but few to the extent apparent here. Hello, Avalanche plays up subtleties and nuances that get lost live, preferring the intimacy of details over the euphoria of grandeur.

It’s a disc that rarely overwhelms you with sound, and because there are few vocals (relegated to the last track on the album) and even fewer traditional pop structures (there’s that post-rock thing again), Hello, Avalanche doesn’t grab your attention as forcefully as the band does on stage. But the album grows on you quickly, its more gentle charms equally as enticing as the Octopus Project’s live set. If you get the chance to check out either, chances are you won’t be disappointed.

For most of us, hold music is at best a novelty and at worst an annoyance; I’ve taken to using On Hold as a sleep aid myself (and I mean that in the best way, Enon, I swear). But for the ultra-keen, there are other options. A friend of mine from university came up with an ingenious way to share one phone line between his engineer roommates: they bought a phone exchange unit off eBay on the cheap and used it to route calls throughout the house. You’d call him up and hear “If you’d like to call the living room, press 1. For Frank, press 2….” and so on. They even hooked the telex up to a radio for hold music. If only they’d known about the likes of “Gimlet” and “Please Hold.” A German label called Slowboy re-released On Hold on vinyl in 2004, so if you ever feel like setting up your own subversive phone exchange, you know who to call for music.

This is almost as much a vote for the original album as it is for Petra Haden’s fantastic remake; The Who Sells Out is a great album, and if not for Haden I’d probably have never heard it at all. So for its historical value alone, Sings The Who Sell Out is a great album. The songs themselves are memorable, especially the swirling concoctions of “Our Love Was” and “I Can See For Miles,” and “Silas Stingy” is an almost Dickensian character study whose chorus is delightfully childish. Then there are the faux commercial jingles, which are just as good a showcase as the songs are for the lavishly orchestrated ensemble the Who must’ve put together to record the album.

But many better people before me have written volumes of material on the Who, so I’ll just stop there. What does Petra Haden, member of the musically inclined Haden family as well as That Dog, the Rentals and now the Decemberists, bring to the party? If you’ve heard her previous album, Imaginaryland, you’ll have an idea: while Haden is an accomplished violinist, her secret weapon is her crystal-clear voice. That 1999 album consists mostly of her wordless vocalizations, with only occasional help from other musical instruments. It was an interesting concept album that you could put on and enjoy, but I doubt very many people would call it a favourite. But on this record, Haden has outdone herself; not only has she tossed the instruments altogether, but she’s managed to recreate the spirit of the backing tracks while singing the lyrics over top. It’s by no means a flawless attempt. “Mary Anne With The Shaky Hand” begins with Haden singing, in blissful harmony with herself, “I can’t remember”—as in, I can’t remember what the opening line was. Haden herself said she wasn’t really concentrating on the vocals so much because they simply weren’t as important to her.

That’s perfectly fine, especially for someone like me, whose first listen to the original album came about fifty minutes before the first listen to the Haden remake. Because while Haden’s rendition isn’t all that similar to the original Who recordings, they are, as Pete Townsend put it, “like listening to the songs again for the first time.” Whether intentional or not, Haden brings a sweet choirgirl aesthetic to the proceedings. “Mary Anne With The Shaky Hand” is probably the most obvious example, since the vocal harmonies are so different compared to the other tracks. The Who make it sound sweet and innocent, but Haden takes it to a completely different level; it’s as though Mary Anne had met all those fawning boys after stepping out of church in her Sunday best. “Odorono” and “Tattoo” are equally angelic, with Haden able to luxuriously stretch her voice. It’s amazing that we haven’t heard Haden sing more often, because she’s got an amazing voice, even disregarding her amazing ability to mimic all manner of the Who’s psychedelic touches.

But perhaps the biggest treat—and the parts where Haden had the most fun in the studio, aka her bedroom—are the jingles the Who put on the album. Haden practically gushes with enthusiasm on “Heinz Baked Beans,” and why not? It puts a smile on your face just imagining the vocal acrobatics she must’ve done to put the one-minute track together. And speaking of churches, the bumper at the end of “Tattoo”—”Radio London reminds you, go to the church of your choice”—actually sounds like it was sung by a heavenly choir. Maybe Haden really is an angel.

Oh, Need New Body. If you could only get your collective shit together, you’d have an outstanding album on your hands. But then you wouldn’t be Need New Body, would you?

Take a look at the Need New Body website and you’ll start to understand the problem with Who’s Black Ben? It’s willfully obtuse and amateurish, mostly uninformative and offputting to all but the most dedicated (or determined) of readers. The album is the same way; you can see the potential on tracks like “Brite Tha’ Day” and “So St Rx,” but in order to get to it you have to wade through some pretty strange shit. And while the obvious wankery is occasionally interesting (take the choral section of “Outerspace”), it’s also wilfully obtuse and amateurish. Let’s take “Outerspace” as an example: you can tell someone went to a lot of trouble to arrange everything just so, and yet the end product sounds like a drunken glee club meeting. Which I imagine was the point.

Some tracks are strange (”Magic Kingdom”), while others sound more like a giant fuck you (”Inner Gift”). Then there’s the obviously stupid and unlistenable (the aptly-titled “Mouthbreather”). What grates so much is not just the fact that so much of the album is the musical equivalent of masturbating a donkey onto a canvas and calling it art; it’s that you can’t quite ignore Need New Body because they’ve shown that they do, indeed, have the skills to write some decent pop songs. Take, for instance, “Eskimo,” a delightfully wonky keyboard track that finishes off the album. Or “Beach,” from the band’s last album. And it’s not that Need New Body just can’t write enough good songs, either; I get the distinct feeling that their albums are so horribly bad at times because that’s exactly what they want. They want to write songs that are unlistenable, or nonsensical, or a minute of instrumental noise. In other words, they’re writing stupid songs on purpose.

Well, congrats, boys. Mission accomplished.

Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out would indicate otherwise. Constructed from three years’ worth of material sung into an eight-track recorder, Haden’s latest album is another foray into the vocals-only world. But this time around, the sound is fuller, fast approaching Medulla standards of production (if not in outright weirdness). “I Can See For Miles” is a great example; aside from the lack of drums, it’s easy to forget Haden’s singing all the parts—instruments included—on the Who cover. It’s a far more ambitious album than Imaginaryland and shows that Haden is determined to carve out her own particular niche.

While she usually plays the role of mercenary violinist, Haden can also sing, although she never took lead vocals in the two bands she was a permanent member of. She did, however, drop the violin for most of her solo album, “Imaginaryland,” in favour of a number of acapella tracks.

“Look Both Ways Before You Cross” is representative of the album. It’s an odd little track and very different from the stuff she normally trades in when she plays with other bands. It’s also very endearing in its simplicity, and Haden is a remarkable singer.