Author: Ryan Dunn

Caveat: It is well established that he does his guitar slides backwards, and it’s well commented on as well. Just a heads up.

As we all sit on pins and needles now that Robin Pecknold has cut his hair, trimmed his beard and abandoned his Twitter account, signs that he may have made a wise decision begin to emerge, as demonstrated by this brand new—unaccompanied—Fleet Foxes studio performance for the BBC6.

The song is tentatively called “Blue Spotted Tail,” and even on his own—without the Josh, Casey, Skylar or Christian to wash it with harmonies and echoed instrumentation—the band looks poised to deliver on last year’s promise of continued greatness.

The song itself is a calm, introspective affair, tasked more with asking questions than sharing wisdom. See “Why is life made only for to end?” or “Why in the night sky are the lights on?” as exhibit’s A and B. The way Robin moves from major to minor notes—both with his guitar and with his voice—harkens to the great folk of yesteryear, going back to Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, and Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger before them.

This is timeless music, the hardest kind to make, the best kind to hear.

Mp3. “Blue Spotted Tail”

“No Need to Light a Night Light on a Night Like Tonight”
by Snowglobe.

Mp3. “Nothing I Can Do”
Mp3. “Ms. June”

Rating: 75%

When Sharon Van Etten sings “I do,” on the second track, “For You,” from her debut LP, “Because I Was In Love,” we do not imagine altars or fresh flowers, no bridesmaids or groomsmen, no priests or witnesses. Rather, the words slip from somber lips to fill her empty bedroom. Pictures of her beloved lay spread across her sheets, spilling from an up-ended shoebox, tattered from the months spent inside her closet. A pressed rose falls from the diary she’s reading, blood red and bone dry. Mascara runs down her cheeks and the ashtray is full. Empty wine glasses line her side table to the point of falling off.

Whoever he is, he is gone, that much is clear, and we spend eleven tracks tragically learning this fact, listening to her confessions and questions over minimally forlorn arrangements. And we are somehow transfixed, because in one way or another, we have all been there. We have lost someone, whether it be a lover, a friend, a family member. We know the tragedy she issues forth song after song.

But enough hyperbole and metaphor; onto the album.

Recorded in a small studio by Greg Weeks (of the band Espers), “Because I was In Love,” is a melancholy selection of songs, comprised mostly of lazily plucked acoustic guitar with the occasional tambourine, organ, or bass as an accompaniment (never all at once, mind you), the music never truly soars.

I think what kept me hooked on this album after a few listens was her transfixing vocal delivery. I am a sucker for haunting and non-girly female singers (see Marissa Nadler, Alela Diane, Neko Case, Meg Baird), and Van Etten reaches deep inside our rib cage to tug on our heart strings in the most delicate of ways. Using words like melancholy, bittersweet, somber or forlorn to describe her, you may suspect this to be an optimist’s worst nightmare; and you would be partially right. But her melodies and sincerely emotional delivery are just so beautifully heartbreaking to hastily write off in such a fashion.

If you have the patience, Sharon Van Etten will let you glimpse inside her breaking heart, and you will feel an oneness to listen. “I’m a tornado. You are the dust you’re all around,” she sings about halfway into the album; a piece of insight that maybe it wasn’t all her lover’s fault after all.

But her blessing is her curse, as there is no sense of healing or evolution here, just an even set of songs all aimed at the same lonely mantra: “I messed up, I’m lost, and I don’t know how to fix it.” A few rays of sun, even if taunting, may go a long way to round out Van Etten’s repertoire on her sophomore offering. Time will tell.

Mp3. “For You”
Mp3. “Tornado”
Mp3. “I Wish I Knew”

Average Rating: 71.5%

(Side 1: 88%; Side 2: 55%)

Listening to Rhode Island’s own Deer Tick is like trying to eat a walnut. You have to crack through an impenetrable outer shell before enjoying the tasty part inside. Case in point: To experience the textured songwriting, the dusty melodies and earnest instrumentation, you have to get past the fact that John McCauley sounds like he’s doing a constant impersonation of Popeye the Sailor Man. This single fact may be the central reason many a listener won’t give Deer Tick a chance.

And it’s a cryin’ shame.

Because Deer Tick are — alongside bands like Bright Eyes, Modest Mouse, Band of Horses, Okkervil River and even Arcade Fire — a band defined more by their collective spirit than by the tonal quality of their lead singer. These East Coasters move effortlessly from the back porches of the Mississippi Delta complete with screen porches and  moonshine to the Texarkana saloons complete with tumbleweeds and spur-clad cowboy boots. They’re as authentic a country rock’n’roll band (with a penchant for the blues) as any you’re like to hear, which is at once the best and worst thing about their sophomore album.

Because for all its promise and potential, there’s a problem with Born On Flag Day which can’t be overlooked. A problem best described by taking you through the album, track by track. Let’s get started…

Side 1 (The Pain of Stayin’ Sober)

1. “Easy,” kicks off the album like an anthem for love-torn souls plagued with silver-lined heartbreak juxtaposed against murderous thoughts of revenge. Vintage Deer Tick, right? Dark, moody, up-tempo and unkempt. Full of spirit. I can feel McCauley’s pain, I share it with him. And I’m hooked. A good start to what could be a great album, and the song you’re most likely going to hear on the radio.

2. “Little White Lies,” follows next and starts off slow. I begin to worry whether we may have lost the tightly tuned songwriting and earnest delivery of yore. In the end I’d say this is one of the lesser songs of the front five tracks, but the change-up just past the two-minute mark grabs me by my flannel collar and throws me into the next track with a smile.

3. “Smith Hill,” is a heart-wrenching, soaring ballad which demonstrates a band coming into their own with important, memorable songs. Everything just comes together here. The peaks and valleys, the chill emotion in every word “I can drink myself to death tonight. I can stand and give a toast. To those who made it out alive, but it’s you I miss the most.”. This song might define the evolution of Deer Tick most succinctly. It’s also the song I want to listen to over and over again.

4. Hollow and barren, yet resonant for all its vacancy, “Song About a Man,” crescendos with a harmonica before retreating back into the creaky saloon where it came from. McCauley’s viewpoint comes through in the songwriting yet again: “How can a man feel anything, when all he’s ever got was sympathy?” A question I’ve never asked myself, yet it makes you wonder…

5. The guitar riff on “Houston, TX,” cascades beautifully, like a finely wrought Iron & Wine song, yet doesn’t resemble Sam Beam in any substantive way. We roll along a dirt road in a muddy pick-up and the sun’s just about to set. Everything’s all right as we ride off into the distance, with McCauley singin’ “Oh move on, oh move on.” And so we keep on moving.

Side 2 (The Joy of Gettin’ Shitcanned)

But wait, there’s still another five tracks, right? So what am I doing driving off into the sunset you ask? Damn, you caught me. It’s just that… well I wish I could stop right now, because the rest of this until-now potential-filled album doesn’t hold a bottle rocket to the first five songs. Side 2 finds a different, lesser iteration of Deer Tick in just about every fathomable way.

This is the side of Deer Tick I hoped had been purged on War Elephant. The gravely emotion is replaced by lackluster honkey tonk homage, with John McCauley vying to open for Marty Stewart and George Strait on the next big Country & Western festival circuit. Summerfest here we come!

6. “Straight Into a Storm,” is something you might dance to at your local tavern, sawdust on the dancefloor, quarter in the jukebox. The only problem is that when you finally touch boot to hardwood floor you’re surrounded by your grandparents and all their friends. They love this song, and so you start to hate it.

7. On “Friday XIII,” McCauley makes a valiant effort to add some dimension with, dare I say it, a duet? I remember when Songs:Ohia made their Magnolia Electric Co. album. Three new vocalists joined the fray, including Jenny Benford, bringing something new to Molina’s music we hadn’t heard before. The only problem here is, this song is more a demonstration in getting drunk and fooling around with your girlfriend in her mom’s bedroom than it is a song of any true note. “So let’s get back to what, all that was fair and just, oh won’t you please love me again?” they croon during the chorus, and I feel like somehow they’re pleading directly to me.

8. “The Ghost,” had me yawning from the start, and nodding off by the end. I don’t mind a sleepy ballad, but when the songwriting devolves to lines like: “Oh you don’t have to say anything. But you have got to mean everything,” you have to wonder where the McCauley of old (just a few tracks old, specifically) ran off to? He sings off key in many places here, but not in the forgiving way borne of emotional delivery. Here I’m reminded of “What Kind of Fool Am I?” and I can’t help but wince.

9. “Hell On Earth,” is easily the strongest of this batch of songs, and for me the only bright spot on the back five. They took a down-trodden narrative and pushed it somewhere noteworthy, the way “Smith Hill,” proved they could do earlier on. Despite a slightly predictable and flat structure, I liked this melody enough to stick it out a little longer.

10. Deer Tick still don’t know how to end an album it seems, as “Stung,” tries desperately to take us out with a drunken doo wop flare. McCauley almost gets me to care through the first verse, even though it’s all a bit bad karaoke and too many Zimas to my ears. When the chorus finally kicks in I realize this is the last song of the album, the last song! and I’m fighting the nagging urge to skip back to the beginning and try to forget it ended like this.

Conclusion

But there’s not enough Coors Light in all of Rhode Island to drown out the memory of four of the last five tracks. They will live on in our iTunes this Flag Day and the next one and the one after that. Things started off so well Deer Tick, but something went wrong. Can I forgive you? Of course, but not until you release your second LP later this year. Maybe you can call it Born On Labor Day, and work a little harder on crafting ten songs to match the promise of the first five here?

11. Oh, there’s also a bonus song at the end of the last track, a cover of “Goodnight Irene,” sung in what sounds to be a friend’s kitchen complete with PBR’s cracking open and laughter and screaming in the din. It’s as warm and fuzzy as it is forgettable, though it might still have been a better choice to end the album than “Stung,” was. I’m just sayin’.

Mp3. “Easier”
Mp3. “Smith Hill”

Cinematic. Somber. Tragic. Desperate. Beautiful. So ebbs this stunning track “The Motorist,” off the newest EP of the same name, from the band Arms and Sleepers.

Opening with glitchy samples, a distant screeching, and bittersweet keyboard work, we discover in layers what darkness and beauty together was always supposed to sound like. The forlorn piano emerges near the end, escaping the hectic, crashy percussion for a moment before washing away from shore, and thus washing the song’s narrative sample away with it, lost in the whispery echoes of our memory.

“Sometimes, I feel, like a motherless child.”

Listen to the Mp3.
Visit their Myspace.

Album Rating: 96.666%

First off, you should never judge a book by its cover. Unless that cover is for Portugal. The Man’s upcoming album, The Satanic Satanist (See the artwork below if you don’t believe me).

The band’s fourth proper LP drops on July 21, and boy oh boy is it a doozie. Its eleven tracks play like a collection of distilled moments of clarity for a band who continue to evolve and perfect and experiment with their sound. Well, after several hearty listens, I have to say I hope this album becomes not just another mile marker along their musical journey, but rather a beacon off shore, a light source as they sail ahead into the deeper, darker waters of notoriety. Because, if my suspicions are correct about the eminent reception of this album, they will need that beacon in the same way Modest Mouse needed it after Moon & Antarctica. (At this point, however, Modest Mouse need a life-boat to get back on board, but I digress.)

So what does The Satanic Satanist sound like, you ask? Well, if you have followed Portugal. The Man’s previous albums, starting with Waiter: “You Vultures!”, you will have seen an evolution from post-emo spazz rock to more of an art-folk indie vibe (is that even a vibe?). This album, however, is something different entirely. It’s actually deceptively hard to define, but if you will indulge an analogy for a moment: Imagine The Pixies calling up 311 (don’t ask) and inviting them over to Frank Black’s manse to throw a Sly and the Family Stone appreciation party. But half-way through the gala, evil cousins Ween crash in and send the whole night flying off course. And yet, somehow, impossibly, it all works, like a good magic trick.

There are hints of Yeasayer here, though not in a direct way; I think it has something to do with the fluctuating falsettos and experimental nature of both bands. There is also a spacey, pulpy, Jack Vance sci-fi undertone to several of the songs, but I’ll get to that later. You could do worse than to throw Phoenix into the mix as a point of loose comparison as well, for its laser-precise production and sheer pop appeal.

Reputed producer Paul Q. Kolderie, who has produced / mixed / engineered for such bands as Radiohead, Pixies, Uncle Tupelo, Lemonheads and Dinosaur Jr., produced The Satanic Satanist, which, when you listen to the fluidity and refinement of each track, I’d say it shows. It all flows so smoothly; the songs wash over you like the tide, slipping into your subconscious before you ever know what hit you. But by then, it’s far too late.

No song is too long (unlike this review), and if there is a guitar solo, it’s sixteen-bars, maximum. In fact, a few of the tracks are probably too short, based solely on the fact that I wanted more! Working, for the most part, within the confines of straight-ahead verse/chorus/verse structures along with the predictable refrains, bridges, reprises, and breakdowns of pop albums near and far, I found myself wondering how this album continued to surprise me turn after turn.

The lead vocals courtesy frontman John Gourley transform tightly wound, simple productions into all-out anthems. Crooning falsetto melds into quasi-rapping only to be proceded by the ooh’s and ahh’s we’ve come to know and love within the indie über-genre. He’s no Josh Groban, but I’ll take Gourley’s earnest brand of vocal delivery over the former any day of the week.

On the album opener, “People Say,” a very Ween a la “Your Party,” bass line kicks things off, until the chorus steals the show, reminding us why we loved bands like Blur and Oasis once upon a time. “What a lovely day, yeah we won the war / May have lost a million men but we’ve got a million more.” Look for your local college radio stations (XMU if you listen to satellite like I do) to play the hell out of this song (pun intended). This track reeks of song of the year potential.

The very next track, “Work All Day,” defies you not to bob your head along to its chain-gang style beat. It’s the proverbial summer bounce track, pivoting off a sick break beat and an infectious sing-in-the-shower chorus. I put it up there next to Grizzly Bear’s “Two Weeks,” as another easy contender for song of the year.

“The Sun,” reminds us why we wanted to love Magic Numbers when they first came out, but just didn’t have it in us. This is how you do it, fellas. It’s not about indulgent vocals or over-the-top production. Instead, “The Sun,” pulls it off with distant hand claps, a quirky yet convincing falsetto, and a true appreciation for the R&B greats of an almost forgotten era. “If you’re talking to the moon, the moon might sing about: / the universe shouting out: ‘I don’t need, I don’t need time.” Epic grooviness.

Other standout moments include the fuzzy, layered loveliness of “Do You,” in all of its Pixies-circa-“Where Is My Mind?” wonder; the ’64 Impala flavored badassedness of “Guns and Dogs;” and the soaring, angelic sweep of “Lovers in Love,” a song the Rosebuds wished they would have recorded when they still had the chance.

As the album unwinds, and its final three tracks lull us into a beautiful sense of quiet (dis)comfort, and the final words of the last track usher us away (“We’ll be just fine, We’ll be just fine, I don’t believe…”), you really have no choice but to circle back and play the whole thing again from the beginning, just to see if there was anything you missed, just to take the ride again.

I later discovered the entire LP is, in fact, a concept album designed to parallel a sci-fi story (written by Gourley himself, I believe) about a man who builds a rocket, is banished by his king, then flies into space in said rocket, and crash lands back onto Earth later on (but the planet is completely void of any signs of life now). Ummm, ok… I’m not saying you will discover this hidden story on your own, but it does explain the undeniable sense of narrative structure to the song cycle.

Where other acts have failed in their attempt at manufacturing a successful concept album (ahem, Decemberists), Portugal. The Man succeed in the best way possible: each song maintains its own distinct identity, while an undercurrents of cohesion flows through their collective veins. It’s also worth noting that this is a gapless album, meaning many of the songs run together without any pause in the instrumentation. I usually loathe this cheese ball tactic (especially on hip-hop albums), but here it truly works to build a seamlessness and connective tissue from one chapter to the next.

As I reflect upon The Satanic Satanist, I realize there is nothing satanic about the album at all. Rather, it is nothing if not a sunny, groovy, summer soirée with hooks and riffs and anthems sent down from a troupe of bearded angels donning unkempt wings. Not a jam album per se (not quite), but a work no doubt destined to turn heads (concert and blog-heads alike) later this season. I guess that means I’ll be turning my head twice, sort of like I was possessed…

Album Artwork: Austin Sellers

My friend Ryan Rothermel just wrapped shooting of a new promo for Portugal. The Man, along with another buddy, Robbie Johnstone. They sounded pleased and exhausted. I’m anxious to see how this bizarro setup edits together. Check out some of the behind-the-scenes shots below (check out the full set on Flickr, here).