Album Review: Cloud Nothings: Attack On Memory (2012)

By Scott Jeffrey

Cloud Nothings is an indie rock band from Cleveland Ohio. For the most part were relitvely unknown until their third release just this past week Attack On Memory. These guys have come a long way from their first release which was recorded on a band member’s personal computer.

This is a doozy of an album and has flown up the charts on billboard and pitchfork already. The album begins with No Future/No Past a song that had been floating around the internet for some time. This song starts with a depressing drone and builds into a huge rageamaholic release. The songs on this album are very simple nearly on the verge of a punk. It’s just one verse chorus and maybe a bridge “wham bam thank you mam”.

Songs like Our Plans and Stay Useless have a Strokes feel. The bass and vocals have a similar New York Indie Rock style.

The album has some great instrumentals, there are a few bits where vocals just stop and these guys go a bit post-rock, the song Wasted Days is a great example of how a long instrumental midway through can make for an absolutely epic track.

Cut You Is a radio friendly track that has one of the catchiest choruses I’ve heard in 2012. This has to be the next single.

9/10

Final thought: My only gripe with this album is that there really isn’t enough of it. The 8 tracks are great but they have left me wanting more. If you’re a fan of the Strokes or Violent Soho, give these guys a listen. 

Music News: Jack White Goes Solo

By Scott Jeffrey

The internet is buzzing today, Jack White, front man for The White Stripes, head of Third Man Records and associated with such acts as The Dead Weather and The Raconteurs, has finally decided to bless us with a solo album.

Considering just about everything this man touches is gold, this is very exciting news. Exciting enough that people have begun to even do uke covers of it already.

So I woke up this morning and got very excited when I saw Jack’s name trending on twitter. I had my first listen of Love Interruption off of the preview 7” that third man is releasing today for the album entitled Blunderbuss which is slated to release on April 23. This leaves us with a long time to wait.

The song is short and sweet. It has his sound captured in a personal way, like your sitting in in the same room. An acoustic guitar playing simple chords, a bluesy organ and female backing vocals build this charming track. The lyrics are very well crafted and soulful, if this is any indication of what is to come or what White has been holding onto, we are all in for quite a treat.

Album Review: The Big Pink : Future This (2011)

By: Scott Jeffrey


The Big Pink, A London England duo consisting of Robbie Furze and Milo Cordel, has been at it since 2009. On their debut album A Brief History of Love, the band gained notoriety with the single Dominos.


Their sophomore effort Future This seems to have a very similar sound to the first record. The first track Stay Gold sounds like it might as well belong on the first album with a very similar progression to Dominoes.


The Big Pink does an electro-bass pop sound very well. It is electronic music that you can hear evolved out of bands like Soft Cell and Depeche Mode, only with a much more positive and modern spin.


Lose Your Mind starts off like an early Nine Inch Nails song, but turns into a very different entity. With a really heavy bass and slow rumbling chorus, this is the harder song on the album that dances on a line between electro pop and rock.   


77 the final track on the album slows things down for a nice close. This will probably make its way into greys anatomy for one of those voiceovers. It’s got sweeping strings, piano and thick electronic drum line to perfectly compliment one of those depressing monologues. 


Rubbernecking is probably one of my favourite songs on the album. It does what this band does best, gives you a good party tune that you could blast at a small club and get a massive response from the crowd. It’s so catchy you can’t help but like it. Through a good set of speakers the bass will shock you out of a stupor and make you want  to carpe diem. 


The band is not known for having the most formidable lyrics, labelled as Britpop for the simplicity and pure catchiness of the choruses. With their introspective, serious songs like Hit The Ground (Superman) really only having a few simple and direct verses. It is not poetry but it strives to be yet another catchy track on the album. It seems as though they aren’t going for Dylan like storytelling, but for an Oasis chorus that even the drunkest bar patron could launch into. 


Now I know you are saying, it’s pop what of it? Sometimes an effort to tell a story or show a different side to a band on a sophomore album gives them a little more staying power, and I fear The Big Pink have just given us more of the same old stuff. 






6/10


Final thought: Not a terrible album, but also not anything spectacular. I don’t think its going to be flying up any charts quite the way as intended. A few songs are very good as singles, but don’t really show the band growing in any way. Not that it is a bad idea to produce catchy radio/club friendly songs, but eventually things start to get old and this year’s single sounds the same as last year’s single. I just expected a bit more out of this.

EP Review: Phantogram: Nightlife (2011)

By Scott Jeffrey


I have been waiting for some new Phantogram material since 2009. Although this isn’t a new full length it will have to do for now.
Phantogram is an indie electro pop duo from Saratonga Springs, New York. Their debut Eyelid Movies received a warm reception and it seemed as though the band was going places. Unfortunately it has been quite some time since I have heard new content.


Nightlife  starts with the track 16 Years  a song that feels a bit different than Eyelid Movies. Its not quite as heavy, and not quite as electronically driven as most of the stuff on that album. Simple lyrics, a crunchy drum beat with soft vocals and a swirling backing guitars. 


Songs like Make A Fist and Dark Tunnel  sound very similar to the material on the last album. I swore Dark Tunnel  was just a continuation of Running From The Cops.


Don’t Move has some very cool sampling, using very short clips and some clever editing to form the chorus this is like the club song that wasn’t. Its like a song that you could play at a strip club, that has a light positive enough to make you forget the dancer is taking that wad of bills home to her 5 downtrodden children. 


The title track Nightlife has a sound similar to that of the Drive soundtrack, an ongoing speak and spell bass drone builds this song up to a room silencing ending. 


7.5/10


Final thought: A good Ep, it makes me really excited for these guys to get going on a new full length. It shows the band has grown a bit and has a lot of variety to offer. It\s different but not without compromising the Phantogram sound. Please sir I want some more.  

Album Review:Parenthetical Girls: Entanglements (2008)

By: Scott Jeffrey

This is a band that I completely overlooked during my heavy Sufjan Stevans phase. Parenthetical Girls are just pure experimental pop.

Parenthetical girls are originally from Everet Washington. Their catalogue is quite expansive for a group of their notoriety. They even have a few Christmas albums.

With this release experimental should be underlined and highlighted. Songs seem to have a form but then it’s lost and evolved as the track continues. Not to mention the tracks flow, but in a very odd way. Some feel like time capsules, some have a very modern indie pop feel. The mixing is fantastic capturing antique sound in some songs with the technology of today.

Four Words is a track that if it were played through an antique lo-fi speaker would sound like a 1920’s-30’s radio song you might find on Boardwalk Empire. It has an old fashioned quality to it, mixed with a very modern orchestral string sound. It’s a very interesting combination indeed.

Then there are songs like A Song For Ellie Greenwich which sounds like it might as well belong on The Age of Adz. With chimes and a horn it is very reminiscent of Stevens style.

The title track is a classical arrangement only about a minute and a half long. It seems to start off very slow and melancholy and then break into a huge jaunt. If anything it is an ode to a silent movie that wasn’t.  

The Former  is one of the best songs on the album in my opinion. With a bridge that seems to flow like a conversation, this song is like something from a soundtrack. Starting off and building with deep drums and classical strings, horns and flutes join in later during the bridge and then fade out to a choir at the end. The lyrics are a bit cheeky but also tell a depressing tale. The words flow like poetry not a pop song.

As much as I like a few songs off of this album, this really isn’t something I think I could listen to a lot of. It’s too unpredictable in form, a bit too experimental for me.

6/10

Takeaway thoughts: If you are a fan of Sufjan Stevens or the style in which he plays, give this band a looksee. You will not be disappointed. 

Album Review: Royal Bangs: Flux Outside (2011)

By:Scott Jeffrey


Generally when I sit down to listen to an album it is possible to pick out the Mozart in the group. It’s the band member who drives a track with 3 minute guitar solos, epileptic drum lines and well, no polite way of saying it, flea’ing out on bass. 


The issue with Knoxville Tennessee   Natives Royal Bangs latest effort, Flux Outside is that there is no standout.  What we have here is a trio of Mozart’s. There is no power struggle for who carries the biggest musical peen. Instead a harmony. 


This band is wickedly tight, and on my journey through the album I was impressed, jaw droppingly so with some of the musical prowess displayed by each member  over this 12 track lp.


A very tough band to classify, the only real way to put a label on the band is to say that they use many elements from many genres. You’ll hear great arena rock vocals, southern rock harmonies. Glam rock guitars, Blues fuzz, Hard rock drums, even some 8 bit video game sounds. Experimental does not even begin to describe the pop/indie/rock sound this band has. Talk about them for 3 minutes and you sound so hipster it hurts. 


Launched into the album with Grass Helmet, you are half expecting it to be a Tokyo police club song. Bass and drums work together to make sure you feel this in your chest, it would be a really fun song for a live show. This is the first song on the album which displays the interweaving vocal harmonies Ryan Schaefer brings to the table. The only real comparison I can attach to this would be a similar style used by the Trews. Only the lyrics on this album seem to have real meaning, poetry even. (Not that “I’m not ready to go” does not have its own form of poetry, which seems to make the most sense after 8-10 drinks.) 


Dim Chamber is actually the song that attracted me to the album, with its fuzzy bass and guitar, this is a standout song that could almost be a funeral march. With twinkling piano rolls faintly heard in the background, the bass kicks in and takes this from an amazing grace, to an arena anthem. 


Bull Elk starts off with  a wrist-breaker of a drum line that comes in and out throughout the whole song. Reminiscent of muse or even The Mars Volta the arrangement would be a nightmare to perform. This track is just a wall of sound. By no means the catchiest song on the album it does have a certain “wow” factor and shows that these guys are really no slouches when it comes to their instruments. 


For a dirty bluesy track Slow Cathedral Melt opens with a very cool bass lick and builds from a slow and downtrodden tune into a huge high note bringing back that massive sound wall these three men are capable of creating. 


I could go on and on about tracks on this album as each one has a really unique quality.


This is not a radio friendly album because the material is sort of un-focused, I wouldn’t say there are any true stand out radio singles. Some of the songs do a bit too much experimenting with electronic sounds where a simple lo-fi approach could have created a very different/ potentially better product.


I will say about this album, is that it is something very refreshing and different, it should be listened to loudly, it is worth hearing the Royal Bangs wall of sound for all it is. 


7.5/10