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Artist: Squonk Opera

Album: Go!

I discovered Squonk Opera via their 1994 debut Howandever, when I lived in Boston and went to things called “used record stores”. The band was called “Squonk Opera“, so that caught my eye. Its instrumental lineup was vocals; piano/ keyboards; wind synthesizer/ celtic flute/ whistles/ sax; contraption kit/ rototoms; electric bass; tabla/ electric tabla. The players were additionally titled “prima donna”, “kapellmeister”, “impresario”, “glocksonic”, “basso buffo”, and “percussionisto”. First six song titles: Inside Height, Jole Du Frommage, hT cT, Drop The Words, the Unusual Mrs. Spitz, Dance Of The 7 Vowels. What the package suggested to me, aside from a mildly prog-rock lineup with a strong rhythm section, was a bunch of talented, imaginative people who hadn’t decided whether they were *really* this godawfully pretentious, or just playing. I was right exactly, and Howandever delights me.Thus I became a fan, despite, for years, being unable to learn anything else about them on the web.

Eventually, come the 2000s, they released more records and made their info more available. Based in Pittsburgh, and led by keyboardist/composer Jackie Dempsey, they’re a traveling, story-enacting multimedia roadshow. They scour grants (as theatre companies must and Laurie Anderson and David Byrne also sometimes must) from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Heinz Endowment, and government arts programs. The YouTube segments of their shows that they’ve put up seem ambitious and, though not subtle, often spectacular, in the literal sense. The music, meanwhile, continued to combine a strong background in pretty 19th-century classical music with rhythmic pulses from around the world, airy synthesizer dramatics, Autumn Ayers’s pure and sometimes operatic vocals, some jazz saxophone now and then, and occasional goofiness. You are Here, from 2006, I’ve probably heard two hundred times, it being one of the albums I drafted to put my babies/toddlers to nap with over the following four years; its pulses and grace-notes are inscribed in my brain by now, and for me it’s a masterpiece both beautiful and intricate enough to have never worn out its welcome. Follow-ups Astro-rama and Mayhem and Majesty — for new stage shows — kept them, stylistically, in either a groove or a rut. I enjoy both pretty well, so I’ll say “groove”.

Go!, then, is Squonk Opera‘s change of pace. Like the title, it is simplified and excitable. Shimmy and Shake leads the record with, of all things, a 3-minute 3-chord rock song: sinewy bass and assertive accordion, with Ayers’s voice showing a new and potent soul-singer aspect. Truckstop Wardance builds on ominous, rumbling drums, Deep Purple organ, and fuzzy, distorted near-metal bass playing; it’s a Modern Rock song, energetic sax solo or not. Maintain the Speed’s drum-and-synth groove is fierce, and while it would ridiculous for me to suggest that Ayers sounds like Aretha Franklin or Janis Joplin on this track — she doesn’t; she clearly doesn’t ingest the kind of addictive fatal substances that would let her — she sounds a heckuva lot closer than we had any reason to expect.

The rest of the album sounds pretty much like Astro-Rama or Mayhem and Majesty, which should make Go! a strong and useful introduction for Squonk Opera newbies: I especially like Flip the Switch, Unwind, and Pulse. I might have ranked the album *very* high on my list if they’d fully followed through their makeover; I certainly enjoyed the experiment. But I can’t fault a band with this many strengths for still, on the whole, playing to them.

– Brian Block

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

Artist: Delta Spirit

Album: Delta Spirit

Delta Spirit ‘s Matthew Vasquez sings with a twang, and their rock music has strong heartland folk/country leanings. I’m told this was even truer on their first two albums, which had titles; Delta Spirit is their third, and shows an, apparently new, interest in keyboards and mild electronic beats. That’s not what you’d notice first.

Me, I noticed the drummer first. I’m not sure whether Brandon Young is unusually good — his choppy, intricate pounding on Otherside is his closest thing to a showcase — but his fast steady kick/snare pulses and fills are mixed loud, and vary enough to keep the rock songs distinct. The guitars ring out thickly, as close to college rock radio as to John Mellencamp, and have no fear of surging power chords. The guitar and drums often strongly suggest, for me, Jimmy Eat World making their version of a TV on the Radio album, accumulating force steadily over the course of the song instead of blowing it all in the choruses.

The reviews I’ve seen mostly downgrade the Delta Spirit tracks that deviate from this style. Ideologically, I disagree: trying new things is always something we should want artists to be eager to do. In practice, I’ll agree that I find the results mixed. The frantic Tellin’ the Mind is excellent, I think: the ululations, organ, beatboxing, the rhythmic tugging of the vocals. Time Bomb is pure Arcade Fire, starting out spare and ending up massive, gorgeous and resonant with keyboards and echoing drum thumps (and drum machine too, I think). Then again, the slow electric piano and drawn-out synthesizer notes of Home and Yamaha are simple-minded, and while I find them pretty, I don’t find them involving. Delta Spirit‘s melodies are fine when the energy level is high, but lack the personality to carry a song.

*****

What I *do* find involving are the lyrics. These aren’t, unfortunately, songs that lend themselves to a brilliant quoted phrase or two; like the music, the words here accumulate their meaning as they unfold over three or four minutes. On the one hand, as a reviewer, I shouldn’t mistake myself for a lyrics site (it’s always awkward when lyrics.wikia.com drops by my house with misdelivered Christmas presents that had been meant for me; and as annoying as I find it when my dinner guests expect www.songmeanings.net‘s pet tortoises to be there hopping onto the sofa, she’s just as annoyed when her guests expect my cats to be around staring balefully at them). On the other hand, I can’t resist offering examples in case you see what I see in these texts.

There’s Home‘s ever-modulating balance among idealism, friendship, anger at the world and anger at himself: “Beaten like a rug, ashed out and clubbed, well, it’s all for my betterment/ I’ll give you a rib, with the marrow dried up/ It’s not much but a widow’s gift./ But in the right rays of the sun, if you squint hard enough, there can only be one like it/ I’d write you a song, for all men to be one, but I’d sing it from a place of pride… Drug in by the reign, of the crooked ways I think, I wish I was in the mood to die/ Well life it is good, no matter how far you sink, sometimes sitting still is better than to try/ When you’re down in a hole, when your heart’s weighed down by gold, there’s a hand that can reach you there”.

Yamaha and California are matched songs to an ex, with a hard-fought balance of apologies and benevolence: “Now you’re dealing with the hell I put you through/ If I had my way I’d be right there with you/ There’s certain things in life you cannot change/ I hope you know I care”, joining “I want you to wander silent past my outstretched arms/ I want you to hide yourself from all I see/ And though my heart will fight until its dying breath/ You’re not for me … I want you to go out there and find somebody else/ I want him to treat you like I know he should”. Meanwhile, nicely-chosen details support the wounded idealism of Empty House‘s “How could one little speck/ make a difference to the rest?/ Well it doesn’t: no one cared except me”.

If Tellin’ My Mind is a brief, eloquent tantrum — “It took the final straw that broke across my back. And as the others watched, they all refused to lend a hand/ I have been taking notes of when you come and when you leave. I sneak out in the night and take everything I need/ Tellin’ the mind just what I have to do” is the complete text — I can report from experience that sometimes idealism and benevolence need to take breaks. Plus hey, it’s rock’n’roll. Delta Spirit stick those words in the middle of the album, not the end. They’re a fun aberration; they don’t, over the course of Delta Spirit, get to define things.

– Brian Block

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

Artist: the Very Best

Album: MTMTMK

As should be obvious from the plaintive opening blasts of fog-horn, the Very Best are a dance band, and MTMTMK is a bright, shiny, transnational, transcultural electro-pop dance record … Well, fine, but it *becomes* obvious once the fog-horn has been made to hold down the ultra-low bass end. Meanwhile, groaning synthesizer has been drafted to hold down the almost-as-low bass; ultra-trebly synthesizer whistles and bleats have started playing the high end; oscillating disco synths have begun to hold down the middle; African drums and Phil Collins-y drum machines have pushed things along; and the song’s vocals have been processed, chopped, and strewn rhythmically, techno-style, over the top. Then there’s Jamaican-style rapping/toasting, some uplifting group/choral backup singing, and a stirring keyboard melody. That’s just the first song.

Over the course of MTMTMK, we hear lots of African-style call-and-response singing — some of it melodically quite nimble — and rapping both playful and gritty, as well as modern pitch-corrected pop mantras, knob-twisted sudden rises and falls in vocal notes, and more disconnected vocal samples. Sometimes the synthesizers remind me of the Pet Shop Boys, sometimes of Erasure, sometimes of Dr. Dre, sometimes of ecstatic Japanese pop hits, sometimes of me and the kids futzing around with minor keys and Casio presets at the store, sometimes even of an imaginary happy Trent Reznor. African percussion plays, or sometimes it’s reggae, while dozens of cell phones clap their hands and snap their fingers. Mghetto, the record’s one serious/ somewhat-dark feeling track (and one of its best), may even feature flute and brass, although they could obviously be synthetic.

MTMTMK is, for me, an album that loses momentum in the second half; an album where most of the songs are longer than strictly needed. And while I think it rallies to end with its absolute highlight — transitioning from chorus-worthy verses to chorus-worthy choruses to a chorus-worthy bridge in the celebratory We OK — I’m also aware that this highlight was written for the Very Best by Bruno Mars, and that I as a reviewer should find this damning. Whatever; I don’t listen to obscure music for the sake of credibility. I listen to find good music. Which sometimes is made by scouring the world’s pop charts for the many ways to make people smile.

– Brian Block

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