Category Archives: Jancember 2006

El Perro Del Mar

s/t (Control Group)

Review By BRock Thiessen

Music executives think they’re smarter than you. That’s why they devise schemes like reissues to steal your money. They trick you into thinking something old is new again by snazzing up the packaging, adding a few “bonus tracks”, and maybe a video or two. More often than not, this trick dilutes the merit of the original and leaves you wanting to strategically scratch out the sub-par bonus material. Thankfully, the third incarnation of El Perro Del Mar’s debut has avoided this pitfall by not altering much of its original conception.

The songs on El Perro Del Mar’s North American debut have been floating around in some form or another for about two years now. They first appeared in 2004 on two limited-edition EPs, were then assembled by Memphis Industries earlier this year and now appear on a domestic release with just one pesky bonus track from the split 7-inch with Jens Lekman.

So why bother releasing these songs so many times? Well, because they’re damn good. Sweden’s El Perro Del Mar, aka Sarah Assbring, makes the type of music that begs for repeated listening. Like the French chanteuse Francoise Hardy, El Perro Del Mar’s blend of the femme fatale with the lonely girl next door is as fascinating as it is inviting. Musically she appeals to retro sensibilities, and yet adds enough of her own to prevent songs from ever being dull. Songs like “God Knows (You Gotta Give to Get)” and “I Can’t Talk About It” sound like they were produced by a Phil Spector gone lo-fi, and “Here Comes That Feeling” has Assbring’s vocals simply dripping in reverb as she gives a nod to old Otis Redding.
Since these songs are about two years old, ingest them quickly and be on the lookout for new material, because El Perro Del Mar must have something brewing in the kitchen by now.

Aimee Mann

One More Drifter in the Snow (Superego Records)

Review By Maxwell Maxwell

Aimee Mann has made a deal with the devil. That’s the only way to explain the 46-year-old American lite-rocker’s flawless good looks, which remain virtually unchanged since her chart success in the 80s fronting ‘Til Tuesday (famous for their quasi-hit single, “Voices Carry”). Whether from Botox or just amazing genes, her bone structure, flowing blonde locks, and wrinkle-free skin put people half her age to shame. If only the same praise could be heaped upon her latest album.

A Christmas album is usually a bad idea. Gimmicky at best and unlistenable at worst, Christmas albums are usually played for a few weeks in December, then consigned forever to the bargain bins. Too bad for One More Drifter in the Snow, Mann’s tenth album, that it had to fall into such a miserable category. Granted, it’s not as bad as it could be, but it’s still not very exciting.

Except for two original songs, the album is a collection of the “classic” yuletide music Bing Crosby and his ilk croon over department store PA systems every year. Mann wrote one song on the album (the forgettable “Calling on Mary”), and one was written by her husband, singer Michael Penn. Most of the songs—languid, lounge-y confabulations—ooze together and form a not-entirely-terrible-but-still-not-very-interesting miasma of saddish Christmas goo.

Much like the fruitcake an elderly relative brings to Christmas every year, One More Drifter in the Snow isn’t particularly appetizing, nor would you want any in, say, mid-August, but it somehow satisfies, in a weird way. Continuing with the fruitcake metaphor, it is a mass of festive, sometimes syrupy, sometimes bitter nostalgia in a bland, slightly stale matrix of half-assed, depressing elevator music. Non-devotees of Aimee Mann: avoid this album. Fans: do yourself a favour. Pull out your old copy of, say, Bachelor No. 2. Use the extra money to buy a Santa hat and some candy canes. Seriously, fuck this shit.

Frida Hyvönen

Until Death Comes (Secretly Canadian)

Review By Quinn Omori

Until Death Comes gets off to an impressive start with the double-tracked vocals of the piano-driven “I Drive My Friend”, the finest of the ten tracks on Frida’s debut. Upon first listen, however, it wasn’t the lilting trot of the former, but the line “once I felt your cock against my thigh” that first grabbed my attention. The words came on the record’s fifth song, “Once I Was a Serene Teenaged Child,” and left me wondering if they were part of a larger example of rather brilliant observational songwriting, or simply a cheap attention grab. In all honesty, after several listens, it doesn’t really matter, as the awkward memories of junior high slow dances that it evoked served to break the relative monotony of the listening experience. That’s not to say that Until Death Comes is out and out bad—it just fails to live up to Frida’s potential.

Hyvönen is at her best when she’s penning tunes with the upbeat bounce of the album’s opener, but she never reaches the same level as “I Drive My Friend”. “You Never Got Me Right”, for example, starts off strong but withers after the first minute, slowly limping for another 53 seconds, and ending before it has a chance to take off again. Ironically, her slower numbers suffer from the opposite problem, with the very short “Valerie” (clocking in at a mere 1:34) standing head and shoulders above the rest of the more reserved compositions on the record, due in large part to its brevity. Conversely, “N.Y.” plods along slowly as Hyvönen plunks out chords, singing the praises of the Big Apple in uninspiring fashion, while some “tasteful” horns decorate the space around her. After four minutes of this, the off-beat bounce of “The Modern”—another one of the record’s highlights—is a welcome rescue.

On Until Death Comes, Frida demonstrates that she’s certainly capable of writing some rather stunning, ivory-laced pop songs. Unfortunately, the record is so uneven, it’s hard to recommend. The high points are good enough to rank with most of the finer releases I’ve heard this year, but they’re too few and far between. And while Frida’s voice is one of her strengths, she’s certainly no Cat Power, and can’t hide her somewhat rudimentary piano playing behind her pipes for the duration of a full-length.

Love is All

Nine Times That Same Song (What’s Your Rupture?)

Review By Jordie Sparkle

It’s too bad that we only get to hear that song nine times, but if you find the edition with a bonus disc you can listen to the song four more times, and that includes Yoko Ono and Kim Fowley covers that nod to these musicians from the yesteryears of rock history. These Swedes have taken dancey art-punk that’s recently been sounding same-old-same-old and managed to etch some freshness out of it. Josephine Olausson’s voice is a wonderful throwback to 80s post-punk vocalists like Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Delta 5’s Julz Sale. The sax they’ve thrown in on most of their songs brings elements of ska or jazz, but in such an alien setting as to render them almost unrecognizable. Faster tracks like “Used Goods” start with a minimalist post-punk feel and slowly push towards a danceable wall of noise at the end. These upbeat numbers contend with simpler musical backdrops to Olausson’s voice, such as “Turn the TV Off” and “Turn the Radio Off”, which invoke an eerie sorrow.

This album does more than ride on the wave of a popular flavour of the week, but stands out as one of the stronger albums as the second wave of this music begins to wash over us. Most of the imitators in dance-punk are easily forgettable, however this album is one that will stick out as a suitable child of the parents that spawned it.

Sarah Slean

Orphan Music (WEA/Atlantic)

Review By Neale Barnholden

The premise of Orphan Music seems to be that it’s an album of music that doesn’t have an album, which means that it mainly consists of new versions of songs from Slean’s 2004 release Day One. This includes not one, but two versions each of “Lucky Me” and “Pilgrim”, and winds up with versions of nine of the eleven songs that made up Day One. Yet overall Orphan Music is a lot closer to Slean’s roots than Day One—the first few tracks are recordings of live performances with her piano as the instrument of choice.

What’s really interesting about these songs is that Sarah Slean’s vocal performance is always similar to the album version, throwing the emphasis onto the music. It turns out this has a big effect: “Lucky Me”, originally a pretty pop-sounding single, shows up here first as a lounge piece for piano, and then at the end of the album as performed by a string quartet. The three versions have very different moods, and seemingly give different meanings to Slean’s often enigmatic lyrics.

Since so much of Orphan Music is a version of Day One, it’s easy to think of this as a companion album, the kind of dubious release that features remixes suspiciously similar to the album version. But this isn’t the case; instead, the songs almost become entirely new tracks. With the addition of a handful of b-sides and two unreleased songs, this is the next best thing to a new album.

On the other hand, if you don’t like Sarah Slean in the first place, then you probably won’t have much use for what is essentially an album of Sarah Slean doing covers of Sarah Slean songs. But you already knew that.

Pernice Brothers

Live a Little (Ashmont Records)

Review By BRock Thiessen

Joe Pernice has decided to put a little music to his writing again with his band Pernice Brothers. And thankfully, his 45-second stint on Gilmore Girls doesn’t seem to have gone to his head.

As always, his teary melodies and Elvis Costello-like delivery make for some rather efficient power-pop on the new album, Live a Little. Here, Pernice and co. revisit some old friends and sounds, while at the same time stretching out their artistic feelers.

As for the old, producer Michael Deming is back behind the boards. He recorded Pernice’s previous band, the Scud Mountain Boys, and the first Pernice Brothers record, Overcome by Happiness. Also returned are the strings and horns that accompanied the debut record, making an effective comeback on this latest release. On tracks like the Curtis Mayfield-tinged “Zero Refills” and horn-squelching “Microscopic View”, this instrumentation is a perfect fit for Pernice’s poignant yet funny lyrics. And to top off the old, the Pernice Brothers have re-recorded “Grudge Fuck”, which was originally done with the Scud Mountain Boys.

As for the new, Live a Little is more of a rock record than previous albums. This doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll break out the devil horns, but foot-tapping and head-bopping are often appropriate. This is especially noticeable in the album’s early tracks like “Automaton” and “Somerville”. The lyrics also feel a bit more rock ‘n’ roll this time out, such as on the stunning closer “High as a Kite”, which rhymes summer with Joe Strummer.

Package this all up and you have yourself a great little album.

Deftones

Saturday Night Wrist (Maverick)

Review By Will Pedley

“Hole in the Earth”, the opener to the band’s fifth studio album, rivals “My Own Summer (Shove It)” as Deftones’ biggest radio-friendly-unit-shifter to date. Normally such a phrase would likely strike fear in the heart of the discerning music listener, but in this instance it’s no bad thing. The song’s main riff sounds huge, its chorus even bigger still. It is quickly apparent that this album doesn’t deviate far from the band’s established sound, but what really sets this album apart from their last is the production. While 2003’s eponymous effort was drenched in swathes of tar-thick guitars, to the point where they nearly drowned out the rest of the band, this album is far more balanced. Compared to the dense and almost impenetrable Deftones, Saturday Night Wrist has been made far more palatable by Canada’s own Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd, Kiss, Alice Cooper). This has really brought singer Chino Moreno’s superb voice to the fore and given greater prominence to Frank Delgado’s contribution of keys and samples, which has previously been very hard to distinguish. These two characteristics are well displayed on “Xerces”, a song that sees the band wearing their 80s influences on their sleeves. Elsewhere on the album, “Rats!Rats!Rats!” is a staggeringly abrasive affair that combines discordant aggression with a beautifully soaring chorus.

The only occasion when this album falters is on the minimalist electro of “Pink Cellphone”, which features a rather irritating spoken word piece from Giant Drag’s Annie Hardy. Fortunately, the album quickly recovers with a closing triumvirate of brilliant songs: “Combat”, “Kimdracula”, and “Riviere”. This album once again reaffirms Deftones’ position as a band who came to prominence during the nu-metal movement but has always been a far more fulfilling, cerebral and indeed enduring musical proposition than the rest of the bunch. Korn who?

Wolf Eyes

Human Animal (Sub Pop)

Review By Quinn Omori

Over the last 8 years or so, I’ve managed to collect dozens of Wilco bootlegs. It’s a practice that’s been questioned numerous times, and one that I finally gave up fairly recently. The shoebox full of CD-Rs that I’ve accumulated over the years vary from tour to tour, but a lot of them would be almost indistinguishable from one another, were it not for the very carefully written labels on each of the paper sleeves. What, you might ask, does this have to do with Wolf Eyes? Not a lot, but something.

Despite former associations with Jim O’Rourke, and the drafting of sound-bending guitar virtuoso Nels Cline, musically Wilco have virtually nothing in common with Wolf Eyes. The Michigan trio’s recorded output, however, does bear a certain resemblance to that stack of bootlegs that currently sits in my room; for the uninitiated, if you’ve heard one, you could’ve easily heard them all. I’m not suggesting that “all noise sounds the same” or even that one Wolf Eyes track or album is indistinguishable from another. However, if you’re not a hardcore devotee, you’d be hard pressed to glean any significant differences between washes of sound on Human Animal and any of the dozens of recordings the band’s released this year. Similarly, Wilco’s January 10th, 2001 rendition of “Shot in the Arm” is surely different from the March 12th, 2001 performance of “Shot in the Arm”, but no one would blame you if you didn’t know why or care either way. But you should still care about Human Animal.

If you’ve got a stack of cassettes and LPs that you acquired from the merch table during Wolf Eyes’ recent visit to Vancouver, you already know this record is one of the best things Wolf Eyes has put out this year or any. If you aren’t drowning in tapes full of aural experimentation, however, this is an excellent place to start. Human Animal finds Wolf Eyes in a slightly more subdued state of mind, but there are still moments of squealing, crashing, and banging that build to create some sublime moments that emerge from the rather wonderful cacophony. If you’re not a Wolf Eyes devotee, chances are you won’t find yourself ready to embark on a quest to fill your iPod with the rest of the band’s vast catalogue, but if you’re only going to put your money on one noise recording this year, this record is a pretty safe bet.

Primal Scream

Riot City Blues (Sony/BMG)

Review By BRock Thiessen

It’s hard to guess what Primal Scream were thinking when they decided to lay down Riot City Blues. The album’s return to the Faces/Stones persona previously featured on ‘94’s Give Out But Don’t Give Up is a rather strange move. No more Kevin Shield. No more electronic gadgetry. Nowhere close to XTRMNTR. Just Bobby G and the boys playin’ some down-home boogie-woogie.

And as bad (or good) as this might sound, Riot City Blues does have its moments. The rock ‘n’ roll numbers, “Suicide Sally & Johnny Guitar” and “The 99th Floor,” go down easy after a beer or three, and “Hell’s Comin’ Down” calls for some boot stompin’, courtesy of the country and western vibe whipped up by Dirty Three’s Warren Ellis. However, like Give Out But Don’t Give Up, the album’s strongest tracks are the slower numbers, like “Sometimes I Feel So Lonely” and “Little Death”, which might almost fit on one of the last two Primal Scream records. If you key in on these few decent songs and ignore the blatantly cliché lyrics of Bobby Gillespie, which are a given at this point, Riot City Blues is decent enough.

Note: Not sure if all the copies out there are like this, but my lame-ass bonus material seems to be improperly labeled. Instead of the listed John Lennon cover of “Gimme Some Truth”, I got a live version of “Country Girl”, and there’s no video content on this disc like they tell me there is. Either the cutbacks must be bad at the majors, or this was some trick to make me put this disc in my computer so it could infect my baby.

Thea Gilmore

Harpo’s Ghost (Sanctuary)

Review By John Park

Knee-deep in the music business since her teenage debut with Burning Dorothy, Britain’s Thea Gilmore works in the mold of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Elvis Costello, among others. Eight years (including a three-year hiatus) later, those influences still hold strong on Harpo’s Ghost.

To me, the way artists use instruments is very important. Technique can contribute or harm the music considerably, depending on factors like variety and notes played. Throughout Harpo’s Ghost the instrumentation mostly stays low key yet interesting, like in the first (and probably best) track, “The Gambler”, with its smooth piano chords. Flashes of electric organ and harmonica solos (a Dylan trademark) grace such laid back tracks as “Call Me Your Darling”, and cello/oriental flute weave throughout “Slow Journey II”. On other tracks, a simple acoustic guitar or percussion accompaniment provides the only support for a sparse, stark tone (“The List,” “Whistle and Steam”). With her ear toward variety, she also includes a metal-pop serving (“We Built a Monster”) that’s sure to get some airplay (well, at least on 101.9 FM).

Gilmore also sports a strong, competent voice with minimal vibrato. She in fact reminds me of the modern Joni Mitchell (I’m not trying to box her in with these comparisons; it just helps in visualizing her music). Her penchant for writing fun, almost sing-along vocal melodies is a plus to my ears (such as “Cheap Tricks,” which I would release as a single if I were her). Besides, who wants to hear a cynical folkster without a decent sense of melody?

But what is her weakness, you ask? Two things: the first is the words. As with many introvert singer-songwriters, Gilmore writes lyrics that try too hard to sound mysterious and full of angst. The second is the production: too often, the electric rhythm guitar is played in the same loud manner. Some variety would freshen things up.

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