Blogcritics Author: Cool Noise

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Music Review: Phideaux - The Great Leap

Cool Noise — Wed, 8 Nov 2006 20:54:36 EST

Do you remember the progressive rock of the Seventies? It was the Age of the Concept Album with meaningless meanderings about Oceans of a Topographical nature. The sheer irrelevance of the subject matter to a boy like me growing up and finding out about girls, motorbikes, and partying was astounding. Music had been taken from three-minute songs about love, desire, and dreams into twenty minute Science Fantasy dirges.Given that scenario, Punk wasn't a revolution. It was just reclaiming music back into teenage territory again. It could ask questions like "have you ever fallen in love?" rather than "have you seen the vermilion sands on Saturn's moons?".And yet, there was something lost. Maybe it was the ability to fantasize, to allow a glimpse of things beyond our experience. The ability of music to take you on a trip to a place you would never visit and to allow you to feel the wonder in your emotional reaction. Of course, we still found it in Joy Division's reclamation of the insubstantial but denied that we were listening to the musical equivalent of Science Fiction. After all these years, it is time somebody reclaimed the concept/fantasy space for us mere mortals who only understand the emotional hit. Phideaux steps forward...This is not a revival of old Prog Rock where technique and concept ruled, but a use of the vehicle to express emotional turmoil. The music is closer to early Bowie's "Cygnet Committee" and "The Man Who Sold The World" than the technocratic Yes, and it is all filtered through understanding of the creations of Siouxie, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and The Cure. I can guarantee that anyone who has ever loved Van Der Graaf Generator or Peter Hammill's solo work will find inspiration in this. We are introduced to a world of fleeing from rising waters, secret Government agencies, Armageddon, and The Rapture. Of course it's overblown and, some might even venture, pretentious. It's time to stop pretending that dark magnificence can have no effect on us.Phideaux is an artist at the height of his powers. One of those powers is the musicians he gathers around him (not always physically since his drummer Rich Hutchins lives on the opposite side of the continent). With the help of his co-conspirators you are presented with a dense musical landscape of percussion, keyboards, strings, acoustic and electric guitar, hammer dulcimer, theremin, and female vocals. All of this is carefully orchestrated in a magnificent production that always leaves Phideaux's precise, tuneful voice in the front.There is plenty of variation throughout The Great Leap. The darkness and claustrophobia of "Tannis Root" and "Abducted" is contrasted to the simple intensity of "I Was Thinking" and "Last" - both love songs but one about before and the other about after the entanglement. The highlight of the album from my personal point of view is the track "You And Me Against The World Of Pain". A rolling rhythmic acoustic guitar plays throughout while Phideaux's voice varies between harsh insistence and plaintive beauty. Added to this are cellos, accompanying female vocals, and even trumpet towards the end. He sings "all storms are beautiful" with certainty and gentleness. However touching this heartfelt song is, you know that it is a reaction to the cruelties of the world. It's barbed, intelligent, and inspiring music. I do have one problem though. Having grown up in the time of Prog my eyesight is deteriorating and I just cannot read the lyrics in the beautifully produced booklet. And that artwork can never be done justice on a CD package. It should have been on vinyl with a full gatefold cover - that would have been perfect. But this is only the first part of the Doomsday Afternoon trilogy so there's time to correct that.

Cool Noise is a blog and website devoted to discovering the best in new music.

Music Review: The Sun-Ups - The View From Above

Cool Noise — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 18:10:04 EDT

Serious indie/alternative music is based on exploring the intricacies of misery. Can you imagine Radiohead singing about going out for a day and just having fun with a friend? No chance. The Sun-Ups are not afraid to be happy and not afraid to be sad but they do it with an overloaded appreciation for melody and harmonies that makes every song a helping of pop gloriousness. To add to the contradictions of time and place, The Sun-Ups are from Seattle, the home of grunge. Their distinctive sound is generated by the female vocal interplay and harmonies of Lucinda Kruy and Brandy Foltz while the musical backing is some powerful guitar work. Genuine power pop with the emphasis on pop.This is the sort of music that Blondie promised and sometimes delivered -- a true blending of the melodic female voice with rock music. Parts of the verse of "Going West" remind me of "You're So Vain" but with the sort of guitar backing that Carly Simon would never have had. "Your Face Will Freeze Like That" is punk in a 1977 way -- people forget about bands like Penetration that talked about real life with energetic guitar and anthemic melodies. Going even further back, "Head Full Of Worry" has similarities to Curved Air in the 1970s particularly in the vocals. The Sun-Ups take from 30 years of musical history and find the upbeat melodies. There is a timeless, classic feel to the music that will make it appeal to people who miss the simplicity of vocal texture from the sixties, the personal song themes of the seventies, and the lushness of the eighties. Of course, everybody has a choice -- you can stay listening to your pop classics from a bygone age or you can take a chance and explore some of the music that is being made today. Bands like The Sun-Ups have grown up listening to the same music as you, have absorbed its values, and taken the dream into the modern age. With so many indie bands producing those moody black and white photos to project their image as serious young men, it is a breath of fresh air to see and hear The Sun-Ups. Their music explores feelings of love, anger, and disappointment as well as happier times. They just seem to enjoy themselves a bit more playing their music and us listeners can do the same. Put it on in the car, wind the windows down, and enjoy what's left of the summer.

Cool Noise is a blog and website devoted to discovering the best in new music.

CD Review: The Distants - Broken Gold

Cool Noise — Sun, 6 Aug 2006 22:43:57 EDT

The Distants' debut album Broken Gold is not pandering to any current fashion. It draws on classic alternative guitar bands such as My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth to reproduce a wall of sound of dense guitar. And then they throw a magnificent female vocalist into the mix.They do a version of The Cult's "She Sells Sanctuary" and thankfully they do it straight - the powerful guitar sounds are probably even improved on. I don't have a copy of the song (The Cult were a bit rockist for me) so I'm very pleased and anyone who has a copy can just sit back admire the sheer affrontery and twist from having female vocals. And think about it, who would cover such a classic song unless they believed the rest of the material matched? The Distants don't lack confidence in their abilities.For me, the songs that match "Sanctuary" are "Falling Apart", a majestic pop/rock work; "Apparent Silence" is like Blondie being ravaged by an evil horde of guitar heroes; and "The Following" is a stunning example of controlled noise - the prefect climax of an album. But what really impresses me is I am annoyed "Sanctuary" interrupts the flow of the album because that song has an inner response from me ... and I would rather the excitement of listening to The Distants' own songs as their music buries itself deep under my skin.The singer Guinevere doesn't have the range of Siouxie Sioux but does have that rock raspiness that Courtney Love exhibits, as well as the melodic charms of softer voiced female singers. She doesn't miss any notes even at full stretch and can move from sultry singing to an all out clarion call loud enough to wake the dead. The guitar, drums, and bass unit are magnificently able to make such dense aural attacks and stay tight.When reviewing an album, I often make a comparison to a band even less people have heard of. In this case, I will say The Distants have come close to the sheer power and aural assault of another female fronted band, the now defunct Solar Race who made the astonishing Homespun back in 1997. With more feedback and more discord they might have matched it. Instead they have drawn back from the brink and added many pop and melodic elements that and could take them onto the iPods of a lot of people. By the time they produce their next album I expect them to be much too big to send me a copy for review.

Cool Noise is a blog and website devoted to discovering the best in new music.

CD Review: Lovebomb by Apollo 13

Cool Noise — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 19:13:58 EDT

I'm hardly an intellectual but I do remember trying to understand Post-Modernism. It seemed, in musical terms, to be absorbing all the cultural reference points of the present and then mixing them up and presenting them in a new way. Apollo 13 certainly take a bewilderingly diffuse set of influences with this album Lovebomb and present them all over again in a mix that is sometimes confusing and sometimes inspiring.When I heard the start of the album, "Intro", my heart sank: why did they send this to me? It was like the worst in easy listening music. But thankfully it was (I hope) a joke and was immediately followed by "The Bomb" and this is magnificent -- a guitar fest in the MC5 tradition with some distorted backing "do do do" to add to the impact. I settled down expecting to be rocked till I drop.Then comes the song "Interference" -- think '80s crap, cheesy Vocoder vocals a la Herbie Hancock and Level 42 -- but by the end of the song it just turns into so many avenues that it may be good, mainly due to hardcore punk intermissions that the song refers to. "Up Up And Away" confirms that the '80s cheese isn't an accident with melodies and textures worthy of the worst of Duran Duran. "Eros" is short with beats programming from advanced elecronica and string textures that even the Dirty Three would be proud of.Hold it just a minute! What are Apollo 13 doing? Three terrible and two great songs (to my ears, maybe the opposite way 'round to your sensibilities). I've paused, raided the fridge and I can't help myself -- I have to listen to more.I feel relief when "Rollin' On" breaks into loud guitar even if it is a bit too Classic Rock for me and "Down I Go" continues the rock theme. But to add to the confusion they go into "Grandiose Palaces", dominated by the type of musical constructions that the Beatles made. I have to stop here in the review; I can't go through every track. I am confused and yet intrigued by all these jumps between genre with such control of everything they try.In a world of copyists, you will find musicians who entice, confuse, and enrage you. These are the important bands. Anyone who merely meets your expectations is a charlatan.

Cool Noise is a blog and website devoted to discovering the best in new music.

CD Review: Boom Times by Don's Mobile Barbers

Cool Noise — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 23:27:39 EDT

If you heard that a band is amateurish, then what do you think? Don's Mobile Barbers are amateurish. It's just two blokes playing drums, keyboards, and guitars (not always one instrument at a time). It is raw -- that is to say, there's no orchestration and no chorus of backing singers. All they can do is present their songs to you. And what songs this band have. Fronted by a singer who couches every note with a sadness and longing, they explore the emotional side of life. Boom Times is a gentle reflection on disappointments in life and relationships. They find out that they "Can't Get Away With Anything" and "The Game Is Up". When someone finds the world a bit too much then "He's Heading Back To Town". The big secret is that Don's Mobile Barbers are well practiced at their art. There isn't a guitar note out of place, every hit on the keyboard just adds to the atmosphere. You get melodies to marvel at and music that calms you when you need calming.Let's forget this critic business for a while, shall we? Sometimes music touches people in a special way. The last Don's Mobile Barbers album was carried around in my months without a home or a job. As I stayed in cheap hotels and in spare rooms with friends and family they allowed me to step inside of myself. The beautiful melancholy that pervades their work brought empathy and understanding. This latest album, Boom Times, can get under anyone's skin if they are looking to explore their quieter side. We go through life finding love and sometimes losing love, and here's a soundtrack for it.

Cool Noise is a blog and website devoted to discovering the best in new music.