Despite an affection for Ryan Adams (and by extension, the Replacements), I like power-pop best when it’s bright and shining, not raw and gutter-dirty. On The Year of Magical Drinking, Apex Manor splits the difference, backing away from the vacuum-sealed sound of 2008′s Broken West swan song Now or Heaven and toward rich, roomy production that accentuates both grit and glisten. On songs such as “I Know These Waters Well” and “The Party Line,” frontman Ross Flournoy’s sunlit guitar anthems soar; on “Under the Gun” and “Teenage Blood,” he puts his pedals through earthier paces. His vocals offer a similar marriage, iron-clad fury melted into vessels for melody. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2010-released When We Were Boys soundtrack is an extremely nice reminder that Jim Guthrie remains the understated, Canadian answer to Sufjan Stevens’ often indulgent flights of fancy. It’s mostly instrumental, but does offer some new vocal work — “If Chairs Were Bears” is miles better than the Islands-bro-damaged pop of 2008′s Human Highway release, as is the upbeat “Trouble” and the early Death Cab gloom of “Sexy Drummer.”

Guthrie’s best-of-decade-caliber Now, More Than Ever was reissued on vinyl last year, though I believe this release marks his first solo pop efforts since. (The soundtrack also includes cuts from Rock Plaza Central and Tomboyfriend.) Stream the soundtrack in full and buy it after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Brave Irene is the new project of Rose Melberg, the best singer in the universe. Inevitably, the band’s debut EP’s debut singles are absolute jams. Both “Longest Day” and “No Fun” pick up where Melberg’s Tiger Trap and Go Sailor left off, picking up the pace and going electric after a pair of quiet solo records and her tenure in the Softies. There’s a ’60s psychedelia influence at play here along with the familiar indie-pop jangle — the lava-blast lead guitar of “No Fun,” the vintage keyboards of “Longest Day” — and Melberg shares the vocal stage with the harmonies of members of the five(!)-piece band. The fuzz-guitars get your attention first, but the dueling keyboards of Caitlin Gilroy and Jessica Wilkin give the songs flesh as drummer Laura Hatfield lays down a backbone. I will now listen to them on loop for the next two hours, and probably until the self-titled EP drops on Slumberland on March 15.

Brave Irene “No Fun” by Slumberland Records

Brave Irene “Longest Day” by Slumberland Records

Previously: Rose Melberg – “This Year Will Be Our Year” (Zombies cover) | All Melberg posts

Getting To The Point Dept.: You need to hear Carl Hauck’s Windjammer. I’ll never post anything I don’t seriously like on Rawkblog, but this is a special record, a collection of tender country-tinged folk that draws on Michigan-era sufjan Stevens and Heartbreaker/Gold-era Ryan Adams with equal adeptness. The northern Illinois musician sings with Stevens’ hushed somberness and a touch of Southern twang, a voice that pairs flawlessly with fingerpicked acoustic guitars. Given that the album’s filled end-to-end with them, that’s a good thing, but the ballad-driven set is at its best when Hauck’s most insistent: at his most Adams-y alongside slow-burning electric guitars on “Coming Away” or in the company of horns on “Martial Riesling.”

His arrangements are thoughtful and minimally laid, a saxophone here, a lead guitar there, and always so rich an addition that one can’t help but wonder why Hauck didn’t opt for more of a fuller sound throughout. Still, even at its most spartan, Windjammer offers fine songwriting and performances delivered with the clarity of a new morning.

Carl Hauck – “Martial Riesling”: mp3

Stream the album in full and buy it after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Memo to bands: be this awesome.

In a Skype interview early this morning, the Radio Dept. let slip that they’re heading into the studio to start the follow-up to 2010 album of the year Clinging to a Scheme. “We’re recording,” Martin Larsson said. “Next week, we start.”

This time, however, they’re hoping to avoid missing — or setting — release date deadlines.

“We don’t want to promise anything because that’s what happened the last time,” Johan Duncanson said. “We said to our label that we’re going to have an album finished by July or something in 2007, then they posted it on their website and it took another three years. So we’ll see.”

The group also addressed a long-ago rumored collaboration with fellow Swede Jens Lekman, which could still be in the works.

“I got a virus on my computer, I [had] just started working on some stuff that he sent me,” Duncanson said. “That was back in 2005. I lost the songs and then we’ve never had another go at it. But we’ve been talking about it on and off as recent as just a couple of weeks ago. So we’ll see what happens.”

In the meantime, the band has a new EP, a two-disc singles set, a February L.A. date — the band’s first SoCal show ever — and Coachella to look forward to. Look for my full interview with the band in the weeks to come.

Tennis’ debut album is a second serve: not a blistering ace, but enough to put the band in the game. Cape Dory is the latest entry into the post-Vivian Girls quagmire of vaguely ’50s/’60s-influenced female-fronted garage-pop acts; they are its Bush, perhaps, or its Alice in Chains. It sounds basically how you’d expect it to sound and less memorable than you’d hope.

The album is perhaps most interesting as a selection of influences: the guitar tones and rhythmic impulses of songs such as “Bimini Bay” and “South Carolina” share more with the early ’00s New York of the Strokes and the Walkmen then indie-pop predecessors Tiger Trap or, for that matter, the Ronettes. The problem is that appropriating the sounds of a sad bastard style leave what should be glimmering pop songs drab and grey. There’s a reason the ’90s indie-pop movement turned toward the brightness of treble and jangle instead of cobwebbed reverb.

What makes Cape Dory distinctive, if that can be said, is the conviction of Alaina Moore’s singing, which arrives with enough warbling passion on lines like “When you kiss me, you really kiss me” to make Best Coast sound like Ben Stein. For 28 minutes, the album’s nice while it lasts. But like a summer romance, don’t expect to love it forever. (In acknowledgement of the band’s outsized zeitgeist-capturing: if you like this, let me point you toward another, better noisy nautical-themed indie-pop album and another guy-girl duo. Enjoy.)

Tennis – Take Me Somewhere by forcefieldpr

(Cape Dory is out now on Fat Possum | 2011 release calendar)

Given more hours in the day, I’d spend them exerting as much effort on hearing previous years’ music as I do the new stuff. Take Paul Levinson’s Twice Upon a Rhyme, as great a reason as any (and better than most) not to forget about 1972. A lost psych-folk classic that rubs elbows with Tim Hardin and the Zombies, it’s the lone effort of a songwriter who for better or worse went on to become a college professor (and father to one of America’s best young music writers). The dewy eyed melodies of “Raincheck” and “Today is Just Like You” reveal a musician full of summer sun — nearly 40 years later, with the arrival of a handsome new vinyl reissue, it sounds as bright and rich as ever.

Paul Levinson – “Today Is Just Like You”: mp3

(Twice Upon a Rhyme is available now on AmazonMP3 or as a remastered vinyl limited edition pressing.)