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Pop Rock Nation

Author: brian

  • #46 album of 2012 – Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose by Beth Jeans Houghton

    #46 album of 2012 – Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose by Beth Jeans Houghton

    Artist: Beth Jeans Houghton and the Hooves of Destiny

    Album: Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose

    Beth Jeans Houghton writes elegant melodies that flip willingly from major to minor key and back. She sings them in a pure, trained-sounding voice with somewhat flute-like properties. She and her Hooves of Destiny accompany her songs on a wide range of instruments: the beth_jeans_houghtonrock standards, but also frequent violin from Findlay MacAskill, and ukelele, piano, harpsichord, and a wide range of tuned percussion — vibraphone, glockenspiel, timpani, bells — from Houghton herself. At their humbler moments, they fit somewhere between pop-country ballads and the pastel late-Beatleisms of Sam Phillips (the female ex-Christian-scenester, not the man who discovered Elvis Presley). At their wilder ones, they remind me of the last couple of Maria McKee albums, and are civil but unhinged, in a way that’s either fun or unnerving.

    Which is how I feel about the lyrics. As could fairly be guessed from the band name and album title, Beth Jeans Houghton‘s an interesting phrase-maker who’s not afraid to be cryptic. I think I can make out an adulterous narrative that won’t end well on the dulcet waltz Nightswimmer: “My darling wears his clothes to go swimming at night./ Me, I can only hope that he’ll go out with the tide./ You’re my only love, and I can’t keep my head/ above this ocean that you poured all over the bathroom”. I think there’s a song about parents and home in the sparse, haunting Barely Skinny Bone Tree, and I’m guessing it’s one in which blood is thicker than water but still is a liquid and known to make messes. Sweet Tooth Bird brags of killing a bird that spoke “words so sweet/ they would goddamn rot your teeth”. The jaunty fast piano-practice waltz Carousel is menacing: “Take off your shoes, hang up your coat/ witness my words as they jump down your throat…/ Fall through the door, and wait in the hall/ silence it permeates all sixteen walls/ It won’t happen again, so children take note/ It’s a funny feeling at that”.

    Like I say: interesting phrases here. And a melodic, decorative, half-loopy pop music that’s certainly a sort of thing I enjoy. Still, for half the songs, I have little clue what she’s getting at, except my hunch they’d be bad wedding song choices. Plus, when Carousel ends and there’s some seconds of silence and then a brief hardcore punk song starts — like a double-speed Clash or a happy Dead Kennedys — it’s the punk song that I find myself humming later. I recommend Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose. Gladly! But — without implying that the quirks of my taste are important — maybe I’d recommend punk vibraphone and punk timpani even harder…

    – Brian Block

    To see the rest of our favorites, visit our Favorite Albums of 2012 page!

     

  • #47 album of 2012 – Debo Band by Debo Band

    Artist: Debo Band

    Album: Debo Band

    Debo Band are eleven students and graduates of Boston’s Berklee College of Music — singer, guitar, bass, drums, accordion, two violins, four brass players — whose self-titled debut is my new favorite album of African-styled music, for what that’s worth. My prior favorites were Who is This America? by New York City’s Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra and, I guess, Remain in Light by Talking Heads — as well as, oddly, one album made by Africans (Tony Allen’s Secret Agent). My favorite album *from* Africa, Wildebeest’s Bushrock 1, is a rock album that doesn’t strike me as obviously African at all. Basically, when it comes to Afro-pop, I don’t know what the heck I’m talking about. As a music critic, that’s a weakness. I submit, however, that for a music *fan*, it’s a good thing: how do we learn, if we don’t start in ignorance?

    Here, then, are some of my listening notes, trying to make sense of what I don’t understand. Akale Wube opens with fluttering cascade of violins. Settles into lean groove that’s equal parts klezmer and funk. Repetitive rhythm guitar, sax solos, fanfare. Ney Ney Weleba builds around fluid wailing Arabian-prayer-style vocals and a call-and-response between the brass-section and thumping drums, each avoiding 4/4 time. It builds quite the percussive momentum at the end. Yekefer Wegagene is slower, solemn, and reminds me of my old Israeli folk-dance classes.

    I’ll list just two more, my favorites here. Habesha leads with a sinister bass groove, has fiery guitar solos, and is punctuated with drum-and-choral interruptions like Queen leaping out at you from behind a dark corner on Halloween (Freddie Mercury, refusing to Rest In Peace, included). By the end, it’s grandiose in a way that’s part Africana and part classical-based movie score. DC Flower is a cheerful, lovely pop song driven by fast clip-clop drumming and a swaying arrangement: someone who found the rest of the album 100% intimidating might still hum happily along to this one.

    I’m gonna cheat now, and Google for informed perspectives. Reviewer Matt Cibula says “In just under an hour, we get a tour through funk, brass band music, R&B and rock, and at least three different kinds of jazz… all filtered through an Ethiopian sensibility”. David Peisner says “Ethiopian-American (leader) Danny Mekonnen is an ethnomusicologist by training… but he also has a mischievous, highly un-academic side… The lack of orthodoxy on display throughout Debo Band is consistently refreshing”. Joe Tangari adds “[E]ven if you’ve spent hours listening to Mulatu Astatke and Alemayehu Eshete, you’ll hear plenty of fresh ideas here, as the band spikes its arrangements with hints of Romany brass and even Celtic melody”. Sure, seems plausible. Seems like an album that I’d find a worthwhile challenge, too. Which – hey – is what *I* said. Alright, then.

    – Brian Block

    To see the rest of our favorites, visit our Favorite Albums of 2012 page!

     

  • #48 album of 2012 – Runner by Winter Sounds

    Artist: Winter Sounds

    Album: Runner

    There’s nothing too unusual about Winter Sounds’ Runner, so I’ll start with comparisons. They tend to be more rousing and uplifting in feel than the bands they resemble most; keep that in mind while mentally relating them to Big Country or For Against or Icicle Works, and you should be fine. Up to and including the ’80s-style big production, and adding the kinds of glistening keyboard sounds that guitar-bass-drums rock groups then would so often find their music supplemented with.

    If you prefer more famous comparisons, they’ll be less accurate, but early U2 (especially Larry Mullen’s near-military drumming) would be relevant. So would the popper side of the Cure, Push and Just Like Heaven and In Between Days. Or the Smiths, if you stripped Morissey’s personality and lyrical acuity from How Soon is Now?  and There is a Light That Will Never Go Out, and as huge a loss as that would be, they’d still sound good. A more guitar-driven Coldplay are a solid reference point, especially if you can imagine them with a bit of Mew’s evasive subtlety and grace. Winter Sounds are more likely than those bands to drop down to something really quiet before roaring back; it’s a trick they’re pretty good at.

    A theme that will recur in these reviews: it would be nice for you if I were better at following lyrics while listening. Then again, it would be nice if more bands were in the habit of providing lyric sheets (to MP3 buyers as well as to CD buyers). Winter Sounds make the sort of fervent songs meant to be sing along with. And while they’re not poets, the sentences I’ve picked out here and there imply that their fervent songs are also thoughtful and sincere and intelligent-enough. Runner might rank quite a bit higher on my list if they *made it easy for me to sing along*. But it wouldn’t surprise me if you handle that better than I do, anyway.

    – Brian Block

    To see the rest of our favorites, visit our Favorite Albums of 2012 page!