Show Review: Akron/Family & Delicate Steve, 3/28/2011

In preface: I have long loved Akron/Family. Was head-over-heels smitten after their Angels of Light split (still their watershed moment as far as I’m concerned). I’ve followed them on each album since their debut, albeit with a slightly lesser attention/expectation than I did when they first hit the scene, but not much less. However, and this despite Erin’s love for it, I have not given more than a couple listens to the first few songs of this most recent one record, S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT, (not that I don’t have plans to).

In post-preface preface: I am, regrettably, and even while in the midst of my late twenty-somethings, becoming an apathetic, curmudgeonly doubter when it comes to live shows. I’m a wet blanket, pure and simple, holding every expectation that I’ll be let down, constantly wishing that instead of standing in a bar/garage, I was plushly seated in a concert hall, and even more than that, laying in bed at home.

A post-preface-preface note: Being an Akron/Family show, there was no shortage of lengthy haired, full bearded men in the audience. Something to keep in mind I suppose.

Sean McCann - The Capital (2011, Aguirre)

RIYL = Axolotl, Yellow Swans, Caboladies

I’m contractually obligated to review anything Sean McCann releases in the following way: Gushingly. In said reviews, it is outlined that I must reference McCann’s extensive back catalog. In referencing his previous work, it’s important I remark that, despite the usual pitfalls plaguing overly ambitious/productive artists, McCann’s work is consistently of the utmost quality. I’m then to explain why McCann’s most recent release may just be the best thing he has produced to date. This followed by some abstract explanation of the sound of his new work – said explanation containing how expertly Mr. McCann “manages” to blend cacophony and beauty. I’m contractually obligated to conclude said description with the listener’s brain short circuiting amidst the sheer amazingness of McCann’s latest album. Governments that be will require an immediate parenthetical. This containing a disclaimer that my claims have not been formally evaluated by their audio-scientific staff. I will contend with this but eventually submit. I’m a pushover in these types of situations. The review will conclude with a prophetic conjecture that nothing could possibly top this in the course of the remaining year; that this is the best of the best.  This is one of those reviews.

Sean McCann - The Vanilla Maiden

Eleanor Davis

I'm obsessed with Eleanor Davis' work lately. definitely one of my favourite illustrative stylists (her comics are especially good - more comics please!).

Belong - Common Era (2011, Kranky)

Belong has long been an FG favourite, from their crumbling, fringed, shoegazing debut – a cloudy guitar-blanket resembling the remnants of My Bloody Valentine smudged and erased down to their earthen core – and their various EP lengthed follow-ups (all notable, but most notable among them perhaps, in relation to this record at least, being Colorloss Record, a stab and 1960’s pop songcraft melted away in the manner that Belong so expertly melts things away). So now, what is it, 5, 6 years later? It is only now that this Louisiana duo has followed up officially with their second album, Common Era. And, surprisingly to all (to me at least), they have leapt quite a distance from their original footing on October Language. These are…songs. Like with lyrics, and drums. The smudged out, erased My Bloody Valentine vibe honed in on in the sound of their first record has been redrawn to more particularly follow that original MBV sound – an erasure and redraw. The result, spawning from a band whose foremost focus has always been sound and texture, is the memory of a song, even as it sits right there in front of you, plain as day: Verse, chorus, verse, ect. I applaud the boys on their willingness to branch out, to risk. I think it’s paid off ripely. And while I still favor much of their early work (Same Places (Slow Version) in particular), Common Era is more than welcome here, and has, as all good records should, increased in its impact and listenability with every spin.

belong 'perfect life' by kranky

Elaine Bradford

Gkfoes Vjgoaf - The Joy of Awakening (2011, Inner Islands)

RIYL = Stag Hare, Wyld Wyzyrdz, White Rainbow

Honestly, I am majorly heartsick over this whole Japan situation right now. Even in the wake of the variously devastating natural and manmade disasters insistent on pummeling against this tiny little planet of ours, this particular catastrophe has been stabbing at me relentlessly. None of this, of course, has any direct relationship with The Joy of Awakening, except that the album has been a safe haven for me of late. A space with which to unknot the tension of the situation overseas. I don’t feel it necessary to wonder about the band name. Band names, album names, they’re no big deal. The music, however, is important: Rife with loveliness, wide-eyes, ample space and healing, the vastness and beauty of what the Earth has to offer, The Joy of Awakening is a comfort necessary in times of desperate uncertainty. Music to uncoil to, to reset with, music that builds the strength of the human spirit, strength enough to do good in the world when good is so desperately needed.

Kim Holm

Visually, this video by Kim Holm is more than worth your time.  The dubstep audio isn't so bad either ("Release The Freq" by Matta).  You'll want to finish this video.  Watch it after the jump.

Roman Muradov

A nice surrealist send-up to Norwegian comic great, Jason.  Read the whole thing here.

Some selections from Roman Muradov's website below. 

Dirty Beaches - Badlands (2011, Zoo Music)

RIYL: rock 'n' roll music, The Hospitals, Carl Perkins, Suicide

Badlands is a really cool, conventional rock 'n' roll record. Except. Except it evokes something alien... summons a ghost and makes you stare at it... freaks you out a little bit... takes a polaroid of something you've seen a thousand times and shocks you with what develops there. So if what's being played is real oldfashioned rock 'n' roll, Dirty Beaches' treatment of the material does two things:

1. It instills in the old form a sense of the rawness, the dangerousness, the violence and darkness and scariness that it's almost impossible for a contemporary listener (or anyone who has come in contact with pop music over the course of the last forty or so years) to hear in the standard: the fact that an Elvis song was once a dangerous thing is something my twelve year-old sister laughs at. Everybody knows that Chuck Berry is nice and cute and is somehow maybe he had something to do with poodle skirts didn't he? Or is he the guy who runs that famous hamburger chain with the checkered floors?

Point is, the rock 'n' roll that Dirty Beaches is playing is more-or-less the original recipe. But his presentation -- the gurgling, clacking recording, guitar rumbling like a car engine, vocals like they're being received through a decapitated drive-in movie speaker -- gives to the old classic stuff the feelings that horrified suburban parents heard in it the first go'round: This is the music your great-grandmother shattered and burned in the streets, praying for your grandpa's salvation afterwards.

2. It gives the old music a sense of its own age -- like this is a relic recording, some tape some guy found that sat in a warehouse for fifty-seven years getting dripped on, chewed by rats, exposed to wind and sun and dust. It calls to attention the fact that, really, what we have in rock 'n' roll is some now-almost-ancient folklore, an antique form of music. And Badlands plays like an antique, awash in all the grainy nostalgia that comparison entails.

It's a trip down memory lane -- but memory lane is kind of a nightmare, and you never really understood it until now.

- Sam C

DIrty Beaches - Horses

Sam Wolfe Connelly

Jeremy Geddes

I love looking at an incredibly executed realism oil. Here's looking at you Jeremy Geddes.

Edwin Ushiro