The Canon, Examined: Anthony Rochester – “Music For In The Spaceship”
Space travel, to paraphrase Jon Vanderslice, is lonely. Such is the message of Anthony Rochester’s Music For Inside the Spaceship, an understated pop classic that rubs elbows with Field Music’s buttoned-up performances and Sondre Lerche’s jazz-leaning songcraft. Like Aussie countryman Guy Blackman, though, Rochester’s songs are a few martinis drier than his post-Bacharach colleagues. He sings with a coolness surely hiding heartache and long-distance longing, emotions he reveals on “She Visits Her Friends On The Moon”: “She’s always going further away,” he begins, before planting tongue firmly in cheek. “She’s visiting her friends on the moon.” But she might as well be, and the space-age metaphor works as both wry wink and sympathetic songwriting. In “Mathematics,” he sings the title subject “is all that we need/to solve the problems between you and me.” If only. Rochester’s scientific approach, however, is certainly enough to solve the problem of what album you’ll want to listen to on loop for the next month.
Anthony Rochester – “Lipscombe Larder”: mp3
(Music For Inside The Spaceship was released in 2007
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You may remember Gabe Hascall’s voice, if not his name, as part of early ’00s duo Slowreader — a sort of King of Convenience for Figure 8 fans. Now based in Portland, the singer’s had a rough time these last few years — from the dissolution of his band (and prior outfit The Impossibles) to kicking a meth addiction. “Just Dust” and a handful of other fresh songs are the product of getting clean and getting inspired. He’s still double-tracking, still sincere and, unlike the late, lamented Elliott Smith, still here if you want him.
Sea of Bees singer Julie Ann Bee (see what she did there?) has the kind of prematurely aged voice one usually gets from being Stevie Nicks or Hope Sandoval for too long. On Songs for the Ravens, Bee follows her predecessors down a path of wild warbling, reaching genuine crescendos at times (as on the stand-out “Wizbot”) but more often trilling contentedly over apocalyptic alt-country soundscapes. It’s a vivid sound, if one without a lot of hooks until its surprisingly full-steam-ahead finish, but the album gains its weight in beauty from coloring outside the lines. “Magical dreams brought me to you,” she sings on “The Gold,” and I won’t call her a liar.
Music’s a lot like food: it doesn’t matter where the chef got the recipe, so long as you enjoy the meal. Gamble House’s self-titled debut is unavoidably an album hopelessly indebted to the music of Grizzly Bear, particularly singer Daniel Rossen, whose vocal timbre and chunky guitar style is imitated (or paid homage, take your pick) all over this collection. But to Gamble House’s credit, these are all really good Grizzly Bear-sounding songs, the economical-but-tasty Ralph’s brand breakfast cereal to Grizzly Bear’s Raisin Bran. On “On Guard,” the band layers electronic elements against a driving tempo and ghostly melodies, while “Only Days Away” drifts into banjo melancholy; the group makes a point of keeping things moving even through frequent segues, a choice (along with the nice inclusion of those dreamy bleeps and bloops) that keeps its evanescent sound from evaporating. It’s capable, often gorgeous stuff, enough to be worth your time — and, just maybe, enough to make Rossen and Co. a little nervous.
