Poll: What was the best album of 2009?

Review: The Brave Little Abacus - Masked Dancers

When I was about twelve, I stumbled across this game called Earthbound for Super Nintendo. Since then, I must’ve played through it twenty times – a feat, considering that it takes around thirty to forty hours each time through. Despite whatever that may imply about my social life, it was a game that seemed like it spoke directly to me. It looked kind of rough around the edges, and it wasn’t nearly as pretty at first glance as a lot of the other games I’d been playing. This kept it mostly out of the mass consciousness, and left it as kind of a footnote in the SNES catalogue at large. Still, there was something intangible about it that hit me in just the right way; the child-like sense of wonder, the humor over an almost invisible background of melancholy, and most of all the feeling of at once being completely original and strangely familiar, as if it was something that had come from my own head. Out of every game I’ve played, before or since, this one stands alone as not just a distraction, but as an experience in imagination.

The Brave Little Abacus, and their latest release - Masked Dancers: Concern in So Many Things You Forget Where You Are - strikes me in exactly the same way as that game did. It’s something that I can’t see appealing to everyone, if for no other reason than because it sounds like it was written specifically for me. It’s rough production value and abrasive vocal style is analogous to the quirky visuals of Earthbound, and similarly may scare off the broader audience they so thoroughly deserve. But that doesn’t matter much to me, because I know the few people that are lucky enough to let it into their heads will find a classic they can return to dozens of times over for years to come.

It’s difficult to describe the band accurately to the uninitiated, but the closest I can come is to call them a fusion of Cap’n Jazz and Yes. There are a ton of other influences scattered throughout, taking cues in parts from bands as seemingly incompatible as The Dillinger Escape plan to the Who, and it’s easy to draw close parallels to other modern emo classics like On the Might of Princes, Algernon Cadwallader, and Colossal. As a whole, however, this three-member band (with a revolving door of horn players) manages to carve out their own unique brand from the source material, and make it work with a grace and intelligence that bellies their young age and relative inexperience. The atmosphere the band captures is the perfect balance of youthful exuberance and the sullen bittersweet of growing up, and takes the listener on a fifty-minute staycation to an awesome country I like to call Rockandrolliopolis.

The structure of the album strikes me almost as a concept album; the songs lace and curl around each other, making it sound more like one long composition with three or four movements. Repeating themes pop up in lyrics, and there is a ton of bleed from one track to the next. One of the things about the BLA’s earlier releases is that the songs never felt like they were unified. It gave them a great variety, but neither of the previous releases were anything more than a collection of singles. On Masked Dancers, the band tells a very cohesive story with the songs they lay out, and broadens the scope of their songwriting greatly. Whereas in the past, the songs seemed very cluttered collections of great ideas, these songs have a lot of breathing room; long intros, quiet interludes, and open spaces. This makes the dynamics of this CD pretty stunning, with some pretty brilliant use of tension and release song structures in the vein of Braid or the aforementioned On the Might of Princes. Another thing the BLA does really well on this release is the way they play with time signatures and riff structure. They can make an 11/4 sound like radio rock, and 4/4 sound like it was written on another planet. The musicianship is top-notch, bursting with technical feats, without the antiseptic, robotic baggage that so often comes with fancy playing. It’s a feat not many bands manage to pull off; the energy and fun of a sloppy punk band with the fast and accurate hands of metal or prog-rock.

From the opening clicks of the metronome on “I See It Too,” those familiar with the band’s older work will notice immediately a shift in style from the previous releases. The song has a full four minute introduction, and clocks in at around 10 minutes, a departure from the way their older releases seemed to jump right into the thick of things. This threw me off at first, and to be honest, I have a tendency to skip past the intro most times, but I’m glad it’s there. It gives the song an epic start, and really sets the tone for the rest of the album to come. After an intense ending, the band flows into the cd’s first segue track. These tracks aren’t all instrumental, but serve the same sort of purpose as a buffer between songs. While I think the idea is cool, these tend to drag a little for me, and are a low point of the album. In all, the 9 track album ends up only having six full songs, but these songs have enough meat to them to keep the listener satisfied.

By far, the best songs on this CD are (through hallways) and Born Again So Many Times You Forget You Are. Through Hallways is probably the catchiest song the band has ever written. Clocking in at 3:20, this is a perfect example of BLA’s poppier side, and has an amazing use of horns. It’s just catchy as hell, and the bridge that first shows up at 1:18 is one of the coolest, most clever turns I’ve heard in a song in a very long time. The verby vocal line and horns that close the song make it feel a ton more epic than a 3 minute emo song should, and the clicky drums that exit the song out are a great way to end things. As for Born Again, the song is epic on a scale that no other band like this has ever reached. It’s like the emo equivalent of Heart of the Sunrise. The vocal line is impressively laid out, and the ten minute song never drags for a moment. My absolute favorite part of the song is a three second guitar turn after an ambient keyboard part at 2:19 – and that brings me to my absolute favorite thing about this band. It’s not their big picture, which admittedly has been improved a great deal on this release. It’s the little details, the painstaking, minute, seconds long ideas that never repeat, and could so easily be looked over. Only with my absolute favorite bands – The Beatles, On the Might of Princes, Braid, Pavement, and few others – have I ever kept repeating a two-second part over and over just to appreciate how much can be said with so little. With this release, I find myself doing just that all across the album.

The negatives on Masked Dancers are few, but I should mention them for posterity. First, as noted above, the transition songs have a tendency to drag on longer than they should. It also would’ve been nice to not hear so many sound effects repeated from earlier releases. They’re actually used better on this CD, but I just think it feels a little lazy that the band couldn’t find any new tones from the hundreds of classic videogames out there that would’ve had a similar effect. Another thing is that, while it does feel like a more unified release, it's hard not to miss the variety that their older releases had. It almost feels unfair to complain about this, because I love the album's unification, but it's one of the things I loved about the previous releases. Finally, as enthusiastic as he is, there are just some people who are going to hate the singer’s voice. I am not one of these, and I think he brings a stunning level of emotion to his singing, and writes downright wonderful vocal lines. Still, it’s an acquired taste for sure, and one that I’m sure will turn some people off from the release.

Beyond all that, this CD is an incredible effort and my absolute top pick of 2009. It manages to simultaneously feel like something that came directly out of my head, and yet something so wild and clever that I could never think of. They represent something pure, unfettered by the rock and role-play fantasies that have corrupted the genre over the years and made possible all the horrid screamo of the mid-2000s Warped Tour scene. The BLA is everything that the bands at the start of the early 90s emo scene aspired to be, and pull it off with a rare mix of technical skill and unbridled exuberance that only comes around when and from where you least expect it. This band is the best modern emo band – better than Algernon, better than Look Mexico, better than Bridge and Tunnel - better than all of those other buzzy blog bands that people talk about on the internet. This album, to me, is the modern equivalent of Analphabetapolothology, and while it may not be the ground-breaking, innovative, culturally significant work that the Kinsella brothers put out in the early 90s, it deserves a place in every iPod that has ever held a Cap’n Jazz song.

Age Sixteen

It seems like everything I write on this page starts off this way, but once again: Bad name, awesome music. I was a little skeptical of Age Sixteen when I first found them; I discovered them because they added my band to their Myspace. I generally like to check out every band I add to that thing (even though its mostly to up my own play count) and the bands are usually just plain awful. Before the songs loaded up, this one looked the same, advertising former members of xMoshMetalSoundingBandNamex. Still, they listed Braid in their "sounds like" section, so I gave em a try.



Well, they don't sound like Braid. What they do sound like is a really screamy variation on the modern emo revival sound that's going on, and a good one at that. It kind of reminds me of a less creepy take on Stop It!! or a less technical Hot Cross. The vocals are anti-melodic screams, but have a nice tone and sound passionate enough to make them sound somewhat fresh. Age Sixteen writes catchy songs and if their three song demo is any indication, good things are bound to come of this band.

Album Review: Bridge and Tunnel - East / West

A lot of this review is going to sound negative, but that's just because I really LIKE Bridge and Tunnel. They're a great band, and I enjoy them quite a bit; in theory anyway. They're playing music along the lines of what I love and doing a pretty good job at it. They're solid players, and they have their own sound. I'm thankful for any band who isn't recycling bad screamo that people pretend to like to get girls, or making insanely pretentious indie nonsense that people pretend to like to feel smart. They're treading along the lines of great bands of the past like Braid; like great modern bands like Street Smart Cyclist and Algernon Cadwallader. But on their full length debut, East / West, something just isn't right. Something is missing, and I feel like they're capable of so much more than they present here. The songs on this release are all just really hit or miss for the most part, and that's a shame considering their potential.

I first became aware of Bridge and Tunnel when I saw them open for the last On the Might of Princes (one of my favorite bands) reunion show. Immediately, the band impressed me with their confidence, their stage presence, and how tight they were. It's also always good to see girls in a band in equal numbers to the boys, and not just stuck behind a keyboard, but out front rocking out. They were the surprise of the show for me, and I went home and downloaded their demo, which was a solid 4 song release that I still enjoy.

On East / West, the band finds themselves treading along similar grounds. And at first, it works. The start of this cd is really strong, with songs like the opener, Wartime Souvenirs, which has a nice jangly guitar line and displays singer Jeff's voice off nicely. The first five songs are all good, with a slight misstep at Night Owls - the Maps and Atlases style intro doesn't work for me, and it goes immediately into vocals by guitarist Rachel. She's a very talented girl, but I've been seeing her sing since her old band Regarding I played at this shitty little storage garage venue called the Local 7, and I've never been able to get into her voice. Still, this song doesn't ruin anything, and the buildup continues. The first five songs culminate with the song Rubrics, far and away the best song on this album. A very good guitar part is matched with seriously catchy vocals, and comes together exactly how the entirety of the album should have.



And that should've been it. This release should have ended right here, at the climax. All said and done this would've made a wonderful EP...unfortunately, there is more than half of the cd left to go, and it ventures into territory that teeters on the edge of boring and just plain mediocre. Nothing is terrible or insulting to listen to, but it just keeps going and by the time The World Series, the album's cliche and predictably placed instrumental, hits, I was ready to throw my headphones to the ground. I can almost appreciate what they were trying to do here, venturing into slightly dreamier territory, but it doesn't work and just ends up feeling exhausted and stubborn.

Bridge and Tunnel's problem is that they're good at making music that sounds interesting at first, but has very little to hook the listener with. They take a very stream-of-consciousness approach to songwriting, flowing from point A to point B and rarely venturing back. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but their songs all sound very similar and follow almost identical dynamics blueprints. Without hooks or variation to differentiate them, all the songs mush into one after a while, and the listener is often left wondering if the track has even changed yet. Vocally, I think Jeff's got the tone and the power to make things sound convincing, but his vocal lines suffer from the same meandering as the rest of the music. The girls' voices are fine as a backup, and they add good dynamics with their layering, but any time Rachel comes to the forefront I start frantically flailing my hands at the forward button. In addition to this, the lyrics kind of strike me as talking to a college kid who's trying to be poignant for poignancy's sake; there's some noble sounding ideas but it's all fluffed with a bunch of what just sounds like hot air.



The 2nd half of the cd isn't ENTIRELY boring, as the song "Down for My People Like Joe Carroll" is one of the best songs the band has ever written, but I stand by the fact that this should've replaced Night Owls in the first five songs and been released as an EP. As is, this album is a 5 at best from a band who could easily be putting out an 8. All that said, I still do really like Bridge and Tunnel, and doubt this is the last we'll hear from them. Hopefully next time they focus a bit more in diversifying the dynamics and less time running over the same ground. You can hear the whole thing for yourself thanks to the fine people at Punknews.org. It's at the very least worth a look.

Standout Tracks
Rubrics
Down for My People Like Joe Carroll

Worst tracks
Dear sir
The World Series
Grace for these wayward hearts

5 out of 10

Le Rug

I'm completely fascinated by the cycles that music takes. Ask me five months ago if there are any good bands currently playing in the underground music scene that all the kids with their shaggy hair seem to like, and I would tell you maybe two or three names off the top of my head and subsequently go off on a diatribe about how much I dislike modern indie and how full of shit everything is. I would then put down the bottle of whiskey I was sipping in between every odd word or so, in a forceful enough manner to smash it to pieces, and apologize profusely for wasting 20 minutes of your time. My, how times change! I now find myself knee deep in bands that are either completely awesome or at the very least interesting, and as a result have been able to switch back to malt liquor to quell my nightly demons.

One of those bands in the "Completely awesome" category is New York's Le Rug, yet another instance of a band with a name I hate making wonderful music. The brains behind this band is some 19 year old kid named Ray, who was in some band called the Medics (who weren't as nearly good from what I've heard). According to the always-credible internet, Ray has quite a story; In a very short period of time, he was approached by label execs who gave him a shitty deal that included selling out his band, rejected this, got dumped by some girl, tried to kill himself, landed in a mental institution for a few days, broke up his band, then wrote a whole album in a week that he only recently released. Phew. But I mean, seriously, who hasn't had a week like that?

Getting down to how the music sounds, the song Gaxinthaw was the first thing I heard, and it very immediately and completely gripped me. It has such a big, catchy intro and then immediately thrusts you into the oncoming traffic that is the rest of the song. It has a serious lo-fi indie feel to it (you can tell he's obsessed with The Fall; he named a whole album after a Fall song) and a great vocal line. Le Rug's music bounces back between loud, top-of-the-lungs style rock (Gaxinthaw) and a dark, moody shadow of hooky pop music (The Loveless Fuzz). It has something of a dancey feel, and with two drummers, it has a very big rhythm section to get people moving. Guitars are fuzzy and keyboards are sharp, and everything gets cobbled together into a muddy mess which actually ends up sounding pretty dern super cool. I've only been able to hear the songs on the Myspace and a few I've tracked down on various blogs, but most of what I've heard makes me want so much more. And is there more.



Even someone who hates this band would have to give them credit for being prolific; they just came out with their third or fourth release this YEAR. Considering I've been trying to put a second album together with my band for the last, oh...two fucking years now, well, that just blows my mind. I haven't been totally in love with every single song I've heard by them, but none have been necessarily bad per se, just not my thing. And when you're putting out the volume of music they are, that's impressive.

Miles Kurosky

The tale of my love affair with Miles Kurosky's former band, Beulah, had a heartbreaking and tragic climax in the year 2004. My sister and I, both fans of their music, were preparing to catch their NYC date on their tour for their new album, Yoko. We were all set to go when our plans were interrupted by a late breaking development - we were broke. So instead, we stayed home under the misguided notion that we would catch them "next time they're around."

This show turned out to be the band's last.

It isn't even that I missed seeing the band. It's that Beulah is based in CALIFORNIA. They're a San Francisco band. So not only did I miss seeing the band before they broke up; I missed the rarest of shows; A final show not for the home town fans of a band from across the country - nay, I missed a final show that inexplicably and wrongly fell right into my fucking lap. I had been given a gift from above, and spit it on the floor, biting and chomping at the hand that spoon fed it to me.

Let this be a lesson: Tell your family you love them. Appreciate your dear friends. And if a band comes out with an album named after the woman who broke up the Beatles, then go see them quick because they're dropping hints.

All bitterness aside, I still love Beulah to death. Their laid back, beach friendly sound, their contrasting, dark lyrics, their love of the Beatles and the Beach Boys; all elements combine into one of my favorite indie bands of all time, and by far my favorite Elephant 6 act. So of course, I've been hungry for more. In the immediate wake of their passing, people begun whispering rather loudly about the prospect of a Miles Kurosky solo act. Now, usually, I don't get excited over solo stuff. It just ends up being a whole lot of smugness and not a lot of substance. But Miles' reputation as something of a control freak is well known, and from what I understand, Beulah was basically all his baby. So I was definitely waiting for this. That wait ended up taking four years.

So, obviously, the project has been revealed (seeing as how the previous sentence would make no sense if it hadn't been). And after four long years, what do we get? Well, not a whole hell of a lot. Two of the tracks on Miles' Myspace are different versions of the same song. Even weirder, they're by Beulah. Even weirder than that, they're sung by Yoko Ono. Beyond those, we get one completely original track; An Apple for an Apple, which I could swear was named something else a month ago. So how is it? Good! Dreamier and less dark than Yoko, and less produced than either of the last two Beulah records. It's just the catchy pop song you'd expect from Miles, and if it's any indication of what's to come, then Beulah's tragic death might finally be redeemed.

The only thing that worries me is how questionable this future remains. This seems to me more like a pet project of Miles' rather than a serious act, and I have a bad feeling in my gut that we may never see more than one or two tracks manifest from this; a proper album almost feels out of the question, and the proposition of a serious tour schedule sounds downright fictional.

I hope, however, that I'm extremely wrong.

PS: He's looking quite the hipster lately, isn't he? And check out that pic on his Myspace with some hot SuicideGirl-type-hunny. Ouch!

Street Smart Cyclist is breaking up

RIP one of the bands that made me start liking modern music again. You can bet I'll be writing about any new projects they start the second I get a hold of them.

Myspace