A Salmagundi of Sounds

Let's be honest, I just wanted to use the word "salmagundi" because it makes me think of delicious salami, and it showed up as a synonym for another awesome word, "hodgepodge." Plus, who the hell uses words like "salmagundi"? Below you will find some other albums I've been enjoying of late. I hope you find one or two you can sink your ears into. Also, I'm in the process of creating an entry that will showcase a top ten list for my parent's favorite songs of all time. I like the idea that I am getting to know my parents through their musical inclinations. I hope to interview them and record the memories they associate with some of the songs on their lists. I'm not sure when this project will come to fruition, but it's in the works already. Finally, my roommate has been kind enough to suggest I try writing about some live shows to make a little extra money on the side. You'll likely see a practice run for the recent Wild Beasts show I attended last week at Great Scott in Allston. Until then, enjoy these offerings:

Artist: Phantogram

Album: Eyelid Movies

Click here to listen

I'd like to thank Betsy for introducing me to this album. Without her genius recommendation, I would not be listening to "Mouthful of Diamonds" over and over again on my iPod. You, too, can listen to "Mouthful of Diamonds," the album opener, on Phantogram's MySpace page. Guitarist Josh Carter and keyboardist Sarah Barthel formed Phantogram when they both returned to Saratoga Springs, NY after separately pursuing what turned out to be other musical and educational dead-ends. They began to play around Saratoga and, after releasing a few EPs on a smaller label, signed with Barsuk records (Death Cab For Cutie, etc.). There sound has been described as "street beat, psych pop," but Carter and Barthel say they are most influenced by Serge Gainsbourg and Detroit hip-hop, and that they created their sound by melding their influences with their own style. That being said, there is something decidedly poppy about their sound. The first two tracks in particular are incredibly addicting, and there is not a noticeable similarity to their aforementioned influences. I much prefer Barthel's voice to Carter's, though their interesting, industrial backbeats make for an enjoyable album from start to finish. I imagine their live shows would be extremely danceable, and many of their songs are heavy with samples and bass. Check these guys out, and enjoy--it's a duo I hope to hear more of in the next year.

Artist: Liars

Album: Sisterworld

Click here to listen

Even after Liars' critically acclaimed, self-titled 2007 release, I couldn't really get into their sound. They are brooding and abrasive--the latter being something I tend to avoid when listening to music. However, after reading a bit more about their discography, I got a hold of a copy of their 2006 album, Drums Not Dead. I remember very distinctly lying on the floor of my buddy's house in Vermont (where I was staying the week for a wiffle ball tournament that helps raise money for victims of spinal cord injuries), and listening to this album on my headphones before I drifted off to sleep. I was pleasantly surprised by the album's combination of intense and calm, accessible and challenging moments. for lack of a better word, the album was incredibly unique, and it was no wonder both Interpol and Radiohead brought these guys on tour--Liars are not slaves to classic pop structure. Their latest album, Sisterworld, is more similar to their 2007 self-titled, but still unique in their catalogue of diverse albums. It's aggressive and, at times, abrasive, and I like listening to the album when I'm in the mood to be challenged. According to Wiki, Liars had this to say about the album: "We're interested in the alternate spaces people create in order to maintain identity in a city like L.A. Environments where outcasts and loners celebrate a skewered relationship to society." That's either a great impetus for an album, or a hearty dose of pretense. Listen and decide for yourself.

Artist: The Dimes

Album: The King Can Drink The Harbour Dry Click here to listen

I happily give credit to my buddy Adam for passing along an article about this album and introducing me to the band. The Dimes are a Portland. Oregon based 5-piece band that writes literate folk-music. It might be easy to jump to Decemberists comparisons, but The Dimes occupy their own space, creating sparser and more traditional folk and folk-rock. As the story goes, their first album was the result of songs inspired by Depression Era newspapers. Singer Johnny Clay wrote the songs after guitarist Pierre Kaiser found them beneath the floor of his 1908 Portland house (again, thanks Wikipedia!). I thought this was a pretty cool impetus/modus of inspiration for an album. But their recent album, The King Can Drink The Harbour Dry, hits a bit closer to home. The album is based entirely on Massachusetts' history, geography, and people. "Walden & The Willow Tree," as the name suggests, hears Clay musing about being "Far from Salem by the sea / To Walden and the willow tree." The entire album is adorned with smatterings of Bostonian references, from Beacon Hill to such and such a Square, to many famous historical figures. I have yet to work my way through each song and cross check the many references to sharpen my much blunted history skills, but the album is fun enough to sustain itself on its musical merits alone. "Celia's Garden" and "Charles Street" are standouts, at least musically, finding the band picking up their rhythm and getting a bit more boisterous than on other tracks. The harmonized, wordless chorus of "Charles Street" is super catchy. Enjoy.

Artist: Frightened Rabbit

Album: The Winter of Mixed Drinks

Click here to listen

I wouldn't go so far as to say Frightened Rabbit's 2009 Release, Midnight Organ Fight, was a guilty pleasure, but it's hard to deny that it's Scottish emo. Dramatic lyrics, swelling musical crescendos, and the whiny but endearingly Scott-accented voice of frontman Scott Hutchison made for what was probably my most listened to album of last year. Needless to say, I was excited to discover, quite without warning, that they were releasing another album. I put it on my iPod as soon as I got a copy, popped on my headphones excitedly, and went about jogging around a pond near my apartment. I had repeated this process countless times with their previous album, so I thought it only fitting to enjoy the new one in a similar context. I wasn't disappointed, exactly, but I wasn't wowed. As with their previous album, the first four tracks are significantly better than the remainder of the album, particularly "Swim Until You Can't See Land," "The Loneliness & The Scream," and "The Wrestle." It is a familiar and at times played out formula, but it's one that I have a soft spot for. It's like my love of films about large animals (Jaws, Lake Placid, Anaconda): I know they're bad films--well, Jaws was awesome--but I love them anyway. However, before listening to this album, I must urge you to listen to their previous offering. It's not that this album isn't good--it is--but their previous album is much better.

Artist: Oh No Ono

Album: Eggs

Click here to listen

On February 5th, 2010, Wyndham Wallace posted his review of Danish 5-piece Oh No Ono's latest album, Eggs, on the website "The Quietus." It is unlikely you will often read a review in which I defer to another review, but Wallace sums up this record brilliantly:

"...it is a record obsessed with assembling its own world, in this case kaleidoscopic, chaotic yet welcoming. It's made by a band whose drive is such that, as documented elsewhere, they broke into an abandoned military hospital outside Berlin to record, and at times worked in shifts around the clock for weeks. For 'Swim', amusingly, they even claim to have gone "so far as to reenact the cloth washing rituals of the West African Baka pygmies, recording ourselves trying to get a good groove out of splashing in the water on the beach". And, in order to ensure that they are equally challenging lyrically, they adopted automatic writing techniques, sometimes writing stream-of-consciousness lyrics by committee, at other times randomly plucking lines from spam email. Oh No Ono are nothing if not foolishly ambitious."

Damn. That shit is intense. They sort of remind me of a Mew if Mew were less prog-leaning and more experimental. One thing you should know is that this album takes time. It's not that it can't be appreciated upon first listen, but subsequent listens will have you discovering new details in each song, and finding method where you thought previously there was only madness. "Swim" is one of my favorites on the album, but it is such a cohesive universe, it's difficult to isolate anything you might identify as a "single." These are the type of records that challenge us to accept new structures and new sounds, and help us see the importance of incorporating modern technology with tried and true methods. I find many people who resist the idea of "working" to enjoy an album. What they love about listening to music, they say, is that they don't have to "try," they just enjoy. I find this ironic, as many of the albums we have come to love most as a collective culture have been toiled over by the bands themselves. I find this logic incredibly flawed; my opponents probably think of me as presumptuous. But there have been many pieces of art in my life that were hard work to enjoy. The first time I read Shakespeare or Hardy or Morrison, for example, I had to put in a lot of work to even understand what I was reading. It took even more work to appreciate it, and even more to enjoy it. But once I got to the point that I enjoyed what I was reading, it changed how I looked at literature forever. This may just be a fundamental difference that can be summed up by something a girl I once dated told me when I told her to listen to the words in a song of Sgt. Pepper's: "But, like, I don't want to think about it, I just wanna listen to it." Needless to say we are no longer dating. Anyway, my point is simply this: don't hate on something until you've given it an honest chance.

Artist: Dr. Dog

Album: We All Belong

Click here to listen

These guys write super catchy pop songs. When I was waiting tables at a restaurant in Harvard Square, there was a pastry chef who couldn't stop talking about this band, Dr. Dog. I thought it was a terrible name for a band. Nevertheless, I made sure I found a copy of the album and gave it a quick listen. I wasn't impressed. I promptly forgot about the band, and they were buried beneath the onslaught of new music brought about by internet reviewing. Three years later I'm trading text messages with my buddy John in California. John has this incredible knack for finding well-crafted albums, and scrutinizes them with an impressive attention to detail. He recommended that I give We All Belong another listen, insisting it was an excellent album. I half-remember being unimpressed, but I knew Fountain worked hard to distill his recommendations down to the very best, so I gave it a listen.

Not sure why, exactly, I didn't love them the first time around. They sound like a band straight out of the 60's, owing much to The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and The Band. Some criticize them for sounding too much like their influences, but they do so in a way that makes them sound authentic and appreciative. Their guitarist's short, intense upstrokes recall Harrison and McCartney (The Girl), and their harmonies and lyrics on songs like "Worst Trip," couldn't be more indebted to The Beach Boys. But their style is well-defined and they own it. They're rough around the edges in a way that makes them even more endearing and authentic, and it's their ability to take themselves seriously without taking themselves too seriously that makes for an enjoyable listen.

Artist: These New Puritans

Album: Hidden

Click here to listen

These New Puritans are something dark and gothic, something disturbing and somehow religious. But something wonderfully complex and avant-garde. Their most recent album, Hidden, melds electronica with tribal drumming with subtle nuances of classical with choirs of children and reverent sounding adults. My roommate described her experience listening to the album first thing in the morning as "intense," and I couldn't agree more. The album is not for light listening or sleepy-eyed morning excursions to work. This album works best, much like Oh No Ono's album, at night time (preferably with a few drinks under your belt for courage). I have yet to listen to the album the entire way through uninterrupted. I'm dying to sync up the start of the album with the start of Bambi and hope there's an audio visual connection--the music is the antithesis of the cuddly creatures of Disney's forests, but somehow exudes all the qualities of a good soundtrack. I half expect vampires to emerge from my speakers and send me off screaming.

This is a British 4-piece band dedicated to experimenting with sounds and conventional pop structures. In their 2007 album, Beat Pyramid, Jack Barnett (lead singer, producer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist) uses the same song fragment in different songs throughout the album--something he says he plans to do across multiple albums. Other interviews I've read with Barnett seem to suggest he's very optimistic about his talent and his band's talent: (the following is quoted from Niall O'Keeffe's review of the album on the website The Quietus):

Jack's the boss of These New Puritans. "It's quite dictatorial," a bandmate confirms. The dictator sets out his vision, which extends beyond his dream of touring with Roots Manuva. "We could write any song," he says. "We want to be everything." He talks about the live show and how he enters a "trancelike state" to "create something that's above us". When an elderly Chinese man passes through the pub selling flashing bracelets, he thinks aloud about recruiting him for the band. Eventually he leads his unexpanded quartet onstage to play a grinding, militaristic set.

Yeah, a couple of drinks for courage.