With a couple of high-profile collaborations and an inspiringly ambitious approach to composition, Joanna Newsom has delivered 2006’s record most likely to make you imagine you’re listening to it live…in the woods…sitting on a tree stump…with various musicians clinging to branches and strewn about the shrubs around you.
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Sweet mother of looping guitar effects! The Slip’s new full-length, Eisenhower, brings interesting, spacey, math rock to somewhat obvious pop songs. The opening track on the eleven-song full-length, “Children of December,” is a nod to all those born around the holidays and the melancholy taste that is left in one’s mouth when they’ve experienced a life of having to share their birthday with Christmas or New Year’s Eve. Personally, as a guy born in May, my tiny violin sings for thee. But the careful attention to the tone of the guitars, the extra round low end and soft symbols make it easy to let the entire album fall into place. That combined with a vocal melody that was appealing enough to make me just a bit empathetic for you Capricorns of the world.
Eternally girlish chanteuse Isobel Campbell has fully embraced the legacy of folk music in her second solo album, Milkwhite Sheets. Artfully arranged traditional songs intertwine with like-minded new tracks to form a beautifully lonely album full of melancholic strings, delicate guitar picking and Campbell’s haunting voice.
Unlike 2006’s Ballad of the Broken Seas project with Mark Lanegan, no song on Campbell’s latest album has the bluesy feel of a good bar song; Milkwhite Sheets would fit far better as background music in some rural, mom-and-pop craft store. These are truly lovely songs, homespun and fragile; it’s as if they might break if played too loudly.
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Like a night of marathon partying that dissolves into gray pre-dawn light, the sophomore full-length from the UK’s Archie Bronson Outfit, Derdang Derdang, tells of our often unfulfilled desire for human connection. Melding joint-fueled philosophical quandaries with post-modern sexual disillusionment and frankness, Derdang Derdang is a comprehensive album of both radio-friendly singles and meandering, reverb-heavy chants. The trio of Sam Windett, Arp Cleveland and Dorian Hobday recorded half of Derdang Derdang while crammed into Hobday’s bedroom, and the second half in the basement of an old farmhouse, with a result that reflects the concentrated elements of a young, male musician’s life: sexual frustration, an earnest quest for meaning, a fascination with rock n’ roll history.
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Regarding the Spoon contributions to the ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ soundtrack, producer Brian Reitzell had this to say: “It created a kind of sonic thread that had just the right amount of nervy melody and rich, simplistic tone.” After seeing the film, his comment rings true.
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I didn’t get the title for this album at first: Awoo. After listening more carefully to the beginning of the album (and guzzling a 24 oz beer at top speed) I finally heard the chorus of the second track, aptly titled Awoo, which repeats the word over and over.
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Some things about Bob Pollard never change: His songs are still short… most under two and a half minutes, his lyrics joyfully random and his crazy voice is still slightly off key.
That being said, the greatness of some of his Guided By Voices albums like Alien Lanes and Bee Thousand and some of his solo works like From a Compound Eye, isn’t as apparent, or maybe not even there, in his new offering Normal Happiness.