forkcast tracks

Monday, June 22, 2009

"Dream About Me"

The Depreciation Guild
"Dream About Me"

[Kanine]

6

I'm sorry, Mario, but our princess is blissed-out. Again. The Depreciation Guild first delivered us their surprisingly complementary combo of videogame blips and shoegaze ethereality on 2007's self-released In Her Gentle Jaws. The Brooklyn band's frontman, Kurt Feldman, also happens to be the drummer for a little band called the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, who've managed to level-up successfully this year. The new single from Feldman's main band upgrades their debut album's sound with the confidence generated by that kind of experience. It's wispy dream-pop about dreaming-- but it's solidly wispy.

As with Pains, your mileage with this stuff may depend on whether you can hear the music through the reference points. In either case, it's worth the effort. On "Dream About Me", the Deprecation Guild's 8-bit elements are mostly there in the arcade (pre-Fire) synths. The drum sounds have more of that heavy thud from Loveless. And where Pains work in the noisy twee-pop milieu of earlier My Bloody Valentine or my beloved Rocketship, Depreciation Guild are slower and just a touch more sensitive. In fact, this song's combination of reverb-saturated guitars, electronics, and the androgynous whispers sent me scrambling through iTunes for my Field Mice comps. Hey influence-spotters, remember a few years ago when Brazilian electro-punks CSS suggested "Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above"? Well, let's kiss and make up and download an emulator for "Mike Tyson's Punch Out".

— Marc Hogan

"Ntende Uli"

The Very Best
"Ntende Uli"

[Green Owl]

8

Hearing Esau Mwamwaya ringing out over M.I.A. and Hans Zimmer on Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit Are the Very Best was a fine introduction to one of the new standout voices in international Afropop, but it wasn't just the reinterpretive novelty that made the Very Best shine. Credit for that hinges primarily on Mwamwaya's voice, quadrilingually adept and textured like steamed sugar, though the upcoming official debut full-length, Warm Heart of Africa, should also provide further proof that his pairing with the European production team Radioclit can thrive as an original collaborative movement. "Ntende Uli" foretells good things: Radioclit provide a beat that gravitates almost entirely around a melodically minimal but impactful bassline out of the Tangerine Dream playbook, scattering percolating electronic chirps and car-door-slam drums over its surface for a bit of stripped-down rhythmic footing. And Esau just soars over it, gliding with a sleek aerodynamic multi-tracked lushness and darting smoothly from drawn-out melodic warmth to brisk, punchy intonations that trump the beats themselves for rhythmic impact. I believe it's sung in Chichewa, as if you should care about a language barrier.

— Nate Patrin

"Kaufman's Ballad"

Megafaun
"Kaufman's Ballad"

[Hometapes]

7

Megafaun don't just catalog American musical languages, they breed them. Who else could pull off a song that sounds like the buxom man-folk of Crosby, Stills and Nash, but moves with the finesse of Reichian process music-- a song, no less, about the desert immolation of Gram Parsons' corpse? As the story goes, Parsons wished to be cremated in Joshua Tree, but after he overdosed, his stepfather arranged a private ceremony in New Orleans. Phil Kaufman, Parsons' road manager, stole the body and drove it to Joshua Tree, then doused it with enough gas to create a spectacular explosion. Just like the tension between the stepfather's conservatism and Parsons' libertinism ended in flames, the collision of the conventional and the progressive on "Kaufman's Ballad" creates plenty of heat. Restrained energy flickers, gradually intensifying, around a hard-flecked banjo melody. Some bowed terror buzzes around like a fighter pilot, or a mosquito-- scale is tricky in the desert-- and gradually assumes a needling omnipotence, like those bugs in Carlos Castaneda books that always turn out to be spirit guides. Rainbow-streaked vocal harmonies pour into solo lines that squeak on rusty hinges. Drummer Joe Westerlund carves the roiling mass into sculptural planes by inescapable degrees, until everything locks together, and you realize you've been waiting for this the entire time-- the instant when the fuel touched the flame.


— Brian Howe

Friday, June 19, 2009

"Daydream"

Beach Fossils
"Daydream"

6

Oh, that hook! Immediately familiar, yet impossible to place; a riff so warmly nostalgic it feels classic upon the first listen. Brooklyn's Beach Fossils make good use of it, putting it right up front, repeated sans vocals, shimmering in its summery glow. A simple drumbeat joins in the second go 'round, muted and underwhelming, working as little more than a toe-tapping cue-- but that's hardly a problem. The guitar line makes the song. At some point the singing starts echoing about, as if piped in from some forgotten era, but it's inconsequential: the words, the verses, they're all indistinguishable and, quite frankly, not that important. In the wake of Wavves and his no-fi brethren, it's easy to cast the beach-bleached vocals aside as so much trendy trash on the shore-- when he starts sighing "Daydream" at the end, he might as well be moaning "I'm so bored"-- but Beach Fossils' music is much more straightforward, and it's all the better for it: A guitar line like he's got here doesn't deserve to get buried under so much sand and tape-fuzz detritus. Now if he could only beef it up with some truly memorable lyrics, or a knockout chorus, or even some harder-hitting drumbeats to give the song some dynamics, some tension, some sort of propulsion. Then again, it's hard to complain when it's so warm and inviting-- sometimes a nice lolling track to relax to is enough.

— Sean Redmond

"F Kenya RIP"

Highlife
"F Kenya RIP"

[New High]

7

Unlike fellow New Yorkers and shameless cultural imperialists Vampire Weekend (j/k!), Sleepy Doug Shaw doesn't beg you to perform tricky postcolonial calculus or diagram the ethical implications of paternalistic blah blah blah. His solo project Highlife-- busman's holiday from druidic folk combo White Magic-- is so candid and specific about its artistic inspirations and faithful to those sources, it's basically a tribute act. Highlife, of course, is a genre prevalent in West Africa, characterized by rippling guitar lines and seesawing time signatures. And "F Kenya RIP" namechecks F. Kenya's Guitar Band, ripping its central refrain, "Madame Zehae Ala", from the song of the same name. But what "F Kenya RIP" lacks in imagination or ambition, it makes up for with an easy-going, summer-suited sprawl, with tuck-and-roll guitar lines like kids on a grassy slope, tip-tapping percussion breezy as a white linen shirt, and backing singers so sanguine in their hums and coos and "woos," they can only be supine in swaying hammocks.

— Amy Granzin

"Autumn Beds"

Modest Mouse
"Autumn Beds"

[Epic]

7

"Autumn Beds" is the A-side off Modest Mouse's second 7" in a month, backed with recent set-list staple "Whale Song" (like their last single, it's slated for release in limited-edition vinyl). The new track is a particularly accomplished showcase of Isaac Brock's preternatural ability to write a sing-along chorus. Although "We won't be sleeping in our autumn beds" is delivered sweetly, it's a bit of a cryptic message, equal parts lullaby nonsense and unsettling equinoctial prophecy. Brock's voice aptly reflects this duality, since-- depending on the accompanying arrangement-- it can easily transition from a boyish innocence to a menacing howl. The arrangement reflects this tension. The lighthearted banjo is balanced at times by a hollow, insistent drum and an undercurrent of burbling noise, emphasizing the protagonists' dire situation: "Our case is drawing to an end/ They said guilty so many times/ All I heard was just the buzzing lights." It's a summer song that gives the listener pause, one that reminds you darker, colder times wait in the wings.

— Susannah Young

Thursday, June 18, 2009

"Going Down"

Ty Segall
"Going Down"

[Telephone Explosion]

6

Ty Segall has been kicking around the Bay Area scene for a couple of years now, first as a member of the Traditional Fools and Sic Alps and more recently as the kind of one-man-band solo act that gets more attention for playing so many instruments all at once than for playing so many styles all at once. With one album out and another one on the way, he skirts gimmickry because he doesn't use lo-fi to apologize for catchiness, energy, and a debt to 1960s source material. Instead, as on "Goin' Down" (from a split LP with Black Time on Telephone Explosion), the skuzzbucket sound enhances those qualities, even as he buries his vocals deeper in the mix than any of the other instruments. A musical palindrome, "Goin' Down" ends just like it begins: with a "Wipeout" tom roll and a garbled Ross Johnson-ism that makes Segall a particularly good fit for Memphis' Goner Records. In between, the song stomps vigorously, part Nuggets revivification and part fuzz-pop trendiness. Oh sure, he could be compared with contemporaries like Wavves and No Age, but "Goin' Down" toys with so many pre-punk influences that Segall sounds more like the a blasted-out Surfaris.

— Stephen M. Deusner

"Valiant Brave"

Ganglians
"Valiant Brave"

[Woodsist]

8
 

"Varied" is not a word you would use to describe the Woodsist label's roster, which is mostly comprised of shambling lo-to-no-fi acts that fit somewhere on a gradient that slides from psych to punk. Most of these bands, however steeped in pretense or perhaps even inflexibility, are at least interesting, well worthy of your listening attention considering their less inventive peers. But in all honesty, how long can you really expect to pass the tape-hiss bong around for? This same skepticism might be applied to Sacramento's Ganglians, another addition to the Woodsist family that could reasonably fill out a bill with Woods and Kurt Vile. So before you write them off as nothing more than beard-enthusiasts, give "Valiant Brave" a quick listen. The first minute or so kind of rambles on with patches of directionless humming and mildly frightening/spiritual allusions, but what follows is a groovy medley of sinister sunshine, like the Mamas & the Papas getting knee deep into some serious backwoods voodoo. Weird flute flourishes and heavy psych drench what would otherwise be a pleasant little Kinks B-side, giving all of that feral hootin'-an-hollerin' some much needed texture. Whether Ganglians hang around for long is to be seen, but for now we have this solid little mushroom-fueled campfire boogie, reserved only for the most lascivious of teenage camp counselors, long after call for lights out.

— Zach Kelly

"Two Hands"

Nudge
"Two Hands"

[Kranky]

8

In "Two Hands", from Nudge's forthcoming Kranky album As Good As Gone, singer Honey Owens spins a mesh of vivid couplets. But the best one comes in the middle: "We are, we are heroes/ With heat-stained cornea." The image of confident saviors with faded, transfixed eyes perfectly catches the aura of this assured, entrancing song. Over dub-infused bass and a shuffling rhythm, Owens' hums fade into the music like smoke drifting into the woods. The song's languid flow is so hypnotic that when noisy guitars enter, the transition is a smooth dissolve rather than a jarring cut-- as if the track's atmosphere can catch any sound in its soft, silky web.

Nudge may seem like a collective of erstwhile solo artists-- Owens records and performs as Valet, Paul Dickow does the same as Strategy, and band leader Brian Foote collaborates with both, as well as Bradford Cox's Atlas Sound. But their music, a singular combination of sparse minimalism and thick atmosphere, doesn't sound like the work of a side project. Not that the band is working in a vacuum-- "Two Hands" evokes the slo-core vibe of Beach House, the avant-folk chill of Charalambides, the surreal jazz of Julee Cruise's work with David Lynch. But judging by this track, Nudge's breezy hybrid has become a style all its own.

— Marc Masters

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

"Bicycle"

Memory Tapes
"Bicycle"

[Loog]

6

Memory Tapes is an offshoot/collaboration between Memory Cassette and Weird Tapes, two acts so similar in sound and name they simply had to align (it's also possible that they all may be the same person). After hearing the project's first official offering, "Bicycle", my only qualm is that they didn't label themselves Weird Memory, but I'm guessing that such a no-duh moniker would spoil the surprise. However clever or inventive those projects were, both usually opted to hide behind the quirky histrionics of tape haze and vague dance loops ad infinitum, whereas Memory Tapes embrace the bright, frightening light with a vigor and that's almost startling. Much like Tiedye's celebrated rework of DJ Kaos' "Love the Night Away", "Bicycle" has a confident hold on the blissfully bored and gorgeously relaxed, but where you'd expect it to wash down like Sunny Delight, it flips inside out and transfixes into something unsettling and astringent. Hell, things get downright eerie as a seemingly benign declaration of love melts into a deliriously disquieting medley of pitch-shifted synths, ghostly come-hithers, perilous low-end melodies, and a grab bag of island-infused percussion.

If that trendy juxtaposition of salty and sweet leaves you a little neutral, you're not alone, but it's in the final two minutes that we can fully see Memory Tapes' shiver-spurring potential. "Bicycle" glides out on a wonderfully languid guitar break that's more authentically New Order than anything New Order have offered in almost 10 years, operating like a long-lost, sweat-drenched hymn from the Haçienda's 11th hour. It's a breathtaking moment, one capable of emotional transport beyond the sort of nostalgia that's so often tastelessly cooked up and thrown into the mix. If Memory Tapes can continue to put out stuff as vibrant and bold as "Bicycle", we're richer for it.

— Zach Kelly

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