The Year In Music ("Want to Wake Up, Wanting to Listen to Records")

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Overcome With...: A Review of Avi Buffalo's "At Best Cuckold"

The prodigal son returns. Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg and his Avi Buffalo project all but disappeared from the ravenous public eye. Never mind his being championed by the likes of the NME and Pitchfork, as well as a slot at Primavera Barcelona, Zahner-Isenberg went away, and made it clear he didn't want to be found. However, this may have been all part of the plan. His self titled (and brilliant debut) felt as if it was always one step ahead of you. Those seemingly horny couplets actually revealed a bruised and battered Zahner-Isenberg after multiple listens. At one he point he claimed "I don't wanna die", before offering the contradictory "I just wanna die". This kid was definitely nineteen, and he was definitely smarter than you, able to make a song about masturbation utterly heartbreaking (doesn't hurt that he's a total aficionado on guitar).

Four years can be an eternity in the indie rock realm, but four years can also feel like an eternity in someone's personal life. Zahner-Isenberg skipped on college to spend his formative years touring, and in his words, "just hang out". He left his teen years behind, reached the legal drinking age, and what could be the most life changing for some, separated from former girlfriend and band member, Rebecca Coleman. The cover of his sophomore release, At Best Cuckold, seems strangely appropriate when put into context. A twenty-three old laying on his back, looking at the ceiling, Solo cup on one side of him, a guitar propped up in the corner. I imagine him as a bit disillusioned, a bit depressed, and maybe even a bit agoraphobic, as his stance reveals an unwillingness to open the door to the outside world.

At Best Cuckold sounds like someone who spent the past four years in their head, not confronting what lays beyond the front door. Zahner-Isenberg falls deeper down the rabbit hole of the lyrical motifs that makes Avi Buffalo, but this time, everything is a touch of shade darker. On "Think It's Gonna Happen Again", he details how "last night I ran over two dogs, then I ate them". The unsettling aura reaches its apex when he confesses, "I think it's gonna happen again". On "Found Blind" he finally leaves, just to trouble the employees of the campsite next door for some weed. Something has been going in Zahner-Isenberg's head, and post breakup malaise is only the start of it; the dissolution of romantic relations has hurled Zahner-Isenberg into a candy-coated Tim Burtonesque nightmare.

But as Zahner-Isenberg grows stranger by the second, the music itself has matured, with all the rough edges smoothed over. Avi Buffalo had firebrand guitar solos akin to Doug Martsch and Isaac Brock, coupled with the Californian sunshine pop that was oh so popular in 2010, lending the otherwise brilliant record a sense of identity crisis at times. At Best Cuckold benefits considerably from a heightened presence of cohesiveness. At the center of the instrumentation is still Zahner-Isenberg's guitar, but this time its six strings are backed up by piano, an ever present bass, organ, flute, clarinet and even a French horn. "She Is Seventeen" features a lilting piano led chorus, one of the most breathtakingly beautiful moments of the record. The too short "Two Cherished Underlings" drifts along like a Flaming Lips ballad, with help from Zahner-Isenberg's (sometimes) uncanny ability to reacall Wayne Coyne.

But Zahner-Isenberg himself is responsible for the majority of crushing moments of the record, due to his clever and heartbreaking lyricism. At times, the Wayne Coyne comparison rings even more true, as he allows metaphor to drive home the meaning of the song (nothing as overwrought as Yoshimi or radical skeletons though); but at other times, he comes across as disarmingly personal, such as the aforementioned "Found Blind", with the wonderfully rendered couplet of "I'm walking barefoot / with some blank CDs". On "Two Cherished Underlings", he recalls trying to comfort a rather unwilling partner by singing "making love, ain't nothing wrong with that". The AM soft rock of "So What" comes across as featherweight with its repetitive chorus ("so what, so what, so what"), but at its core, Zahner-Isenberg is impatient, waiting for a lover to fill the void of the last one. "I had a dream you were acting normal / it made me wake up feeling like a stone" he sings at one point, later intoning "if every dream I have betrays me like this / I want a lover who can calm my ends".

Zahner-Isenberg has always come off as a deliberate personality, pushing you to the point of where the discomfiting lyrics reveal something within yourself. That being said, "Memories of You" capitalizes on the confusion some self reflection would entail. Hell, he begins by singing "memories of you, they only come to me when I'm with you" before referring himself to a "cheeseball on fire", making this one of Avi Buffalo's greatest and most frustrating songs yet. He'll make you wince with his immature remarks, but the gorgeous double tracked chorus drags you right back in, before climaxing in one of the album's only two blistering guitar solos. "Overwhelmed With Pride", the most lovingly crafted song on the record, poses our hero as some kind of lonely wanderer, but who still can't help but be overcome by some of the simplest of human emotions.

The record reaches its peak with the final two songs, that don't just act as album highlights, but career highlights for Avi Buffalo. The closer, "Won't Be Around No More", is a lovely Neil Young indebted tune, recalling "candlelight days, driving home late from Pasadena". Zahner-Isenberg hits us with his most conflicted line ("asked if I was ready to love you then / said 'I s'pose I am' / I think I did but knew it wasn't right, no") as the fuzz pedal dabbled chorus bids us goodbye. But it's the penultimate track, "Oxygen Tank", that certifies Zahner-Isenberg's presence as one of this year's most definitive songwriters. A tinge of unease haunts this hazy track, as Zahner-Isenberg sets the stage for an escape from a regrettable love. Strings and piano swirls around him as he warns his partner of "a man carrying an oxygen tank / is gonna kill me and my family too / if I don't stop seeing you". It comes off as a laughable attempt of breakup, before he adds "if I don't stop seeing through those lies you tell me every day". Because a destructive relationship can equate to a fate worse than death. This realization sends Zahner-Isenberg reeling, as he's plagued by images of him hanging from trees and bridges, the sounds of babies crying and suffocating, and the symbolism of the birds in the sky (you guessed it, pain). It gets to the point where there's nothing left to say, and a paranoid guitar solo closes out this anxious, troubling feeling.

At the hear of it, Zahner-Isenberg is like any other self aware young adult. He's a bit horny, a bit fucked up, and maybe a bit too intelligent for his own good. At Best Cuckold acts as the purging second record that all young artists end up making, from Surfer Blood's Pythons (an example of a not too great one) and Weezer's Pinkerton (perhaps the best of all time). It's impossible to say where Avi Buffalo will go next, as At Best Cuckold offers them as some kind of paradox: young and old sentiments conflating into some kind of confusing whole. But hey, that's what happens when a certain age is reached. Shit doesn't make sense, and like Avi Buffalo's music, it's unclear if it ever will.

Avi Buffalo - At Best Cuckold
8.5/10
Recommended Tracks - "So What", "Memories of You", "Two Cherished Underlings", "Think It's Gonna Happen Again", "Oxygen Tank", "Won't Be Around No More"

The Slow Education: A Review of Cymbals Eat Guitars' "Lose"

The confrontation of loss warrants something more than the acknowledgement that something is indeed gone. These things, whether they have been lost through clumsiness, ignorance, arguments, fights, or even death, all come with a history surrounding them. One must come to terms that they have lost something, and it will not be returning. A bike may be stolen, and the same model repurchased, but the child's impassioned cry of "but it's not the same", informs you that it can never be the same. That was the bike a seven year old used to ride circles around the sprinklers at Carroll Park, before slipping on a particularly wet spot and careening into a nearby bench; the child lost their first tooth because of that bike. As Gareth Campesinos sang on "Life Is a Long Time", "there's cartography in every scar".

A plethora of feelings come with loss: confusion, fear, sadness, anger, relief, shock. And there seems to be no better medium than music to convey the inherent confusion packaged with losing something. Some may ham it on, slathering their songwriting in superficial sentiments. Others, decide to take the surprisingly honest and straightforward route. Armed with an acoustic guitar and supple voice, Mark Kozelek (Sun Kil Moon) crafted the masterpiece Benji, earlier this year, chronicling those who have died, from his childhood to adult life; everyone from strangers, classmates, second cousins and grandmothers. These aren't just an outsider's perspective of stories, as Kozelek deals with his own emotional bloodletting, putting on display the aforementioned sentiments that loss entails. Others, however, put it in more blunt terms, like Cymbals Eat Guitars frontman/guitarist Joseph D'Agostino belts in the opener of his band's third and best record: "I don't wanna die!"

Cymbals Eat Guitars, those perpetually underrated indie rock heavyweights who have been making waves since 2009, are anything but revivalists. They wear their influences on their sleeves, but in a proud manner. D'Agostino, simply put, is a music nerd, who's favorite album of the aughts is Wilco's perfect Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, quickly followed by the indie rock touchstone The Meadowlands, by The Wrens. Their music brings to mind the indie rock heroes of a different time, from Modest mouse to Elliott Smith, but nothing is ever derivative. When "lo-fi" was you and your grandmother's favorite genre, Cymbals Eat Guitars came out the gate swinging with 2009's Why There Are Mountains, that if needed a one word descriptor, would be big. One would be hard pressed to find a single chorus, as songs carried on like long lost deep cuts from Built to Spill's Perfect From Now On (with a Rhodes piano) fronted by Charles Bissell of The Wrens  (who ended up working on the record). ",,,And the Hazy Sea" cold clocked listeners as an opener, moving through six different crescendos, each more cathartic than the last. There were jaunty pop numbers, like "Indiana" and "Wind Phoenix (Proper Name)", but the knottier "Cold Spring" and "Share" gave way to the band's sophomore effort, Lenses Alien.

The most fitting one word descriptor for Lenses Alien would be paranoid. Rife with violence and anxiety, Lenses Alien opted for more challenging arrangements, making it even harder to parse D'Agostino's brick-like verbiage. The band's manager told them it was time to make their "Two Weeks" after a stint opening for Grizzly Bear; "Two Weeks" this is not. The characters of Lenses Alien eat dried mushrooms, kill state troopers, are stalked by highway snipers and "fuck each other in the guest rooms".

According to what's been written, every Cymbals Eat Guitars records is incredibly distinct from the next. Lose continues with this trend, tapping into the unknown, basking in its unexplored textures and D'Agostino trades in his vague lyrics recalling suburban malaise for something more personal. Similar to Owen Pallett's excellent In Conflict (also released this year), we as the listener are witness to D'Agostino jumping off the deep end into autobiography, bearing his own experiences to us. The central theme is D'Agostino's best friend, Benjamin High, who passed away at age 19 due to a heart condition.

The period of coping with loss is different for everyone, the gestation period constantly fluctuating. High died before Why There Are Mountains was released, pushed back due to the rerecording of High's parts (he originally sang the chilling refrain of "when the police bring me in" from "Share"). Instead of confronting the sorrow of High's death, D'Agostino disappeared further into his own head on Lenses Alien, and now it's been six years since High's passing. Yet another similar record in sentiment is Superchunk's I Hate Music (D'Agostino has the uncanny ability to recall  Mac McCaughan at times), in which McCaughan doesn't focus on the details of a close friend's passing, but reminisces of both the good and bad memories. The most dour points of the record are when D'Agostino gives us a glimpse of his recovering from High's death, in which he finds himself incredibly lonely and isolated. However, there's no moping here, as every song is an eloquently told story.

Perhaps the most engaging story is the record's opener, "Jackson". We are placed in the middle of a trip gone sour to Six Flags. Over a gentle piano line and swelling strings, the song explodes before coming back down to one of the most intriguing lyrical openers ever: "you're taking two Klonopin / so you can quit flipping / and face our friends". Who knew a story of High, D'Agostino and his present girlfriend could be so gripping and powerful? The song climaxes with D'Agostino shouting the aforementioned "I don't wanna die". Imagine Elliott Smith's "Stupidity Tries" launched into the stratosphere.

After the six minute epic, the record moves to the more punchier single, "Warning". The song will most likely be remembered for D'Agostino's recalling of High when he was growing sicker ("looking mighty ghostly just like Bowie on Soul Train"), but the real gut punch comes when D'Agostino remembers getting goosebumps on High's roof, admitting that "friendship is the biggest myth". A sour note alchemy encapsulates indie rock's entire cannon into a svelte three minutes, worthy of being put up against Built to Spill's "The Plan" and Pavement's "Silence Kit".

What follows may be the album's biggest surprise: a harmonica. The cow punk "XR" rushes ahead, pushed even further by D'Agostino's distorted vocals and the squalling harmonica, as we are subject to what D'Agostino considers the record's thesis statement. There was a period of time following High's death, when D'Agostino would get high from the moment he woke up, continuing until he went to sleep once again. A way of coping with the loss in his life led to the "summer benzo blackouts" which "erased [his] identity". The song is somehow able to successfully map the multitude of different emotions: bittersweet reminiscence ("fuck your learner's permit, drive down to Philly with me / see The Wrens in a rec room"), depression ("wanna wake up listening to records / but those old feelings elude me"), realization ("broke my bong on purpose, hit the ceiling with weed"), and what stings the most, the acknowledgement of his begrudging drug habit, that also cites High: "High is just a tingling behind my eyes / got no serotonin left".

Like the Philly rec room in the preceding track, D'Agostino uses location as a way to map out whatever he was feeling at a certain time. The six minute "Place Names" recalls road trips to Cape May and Mystic, while "Child Bride" places us in a Cymbals Eat Guitars show in Orlando. The post-punk stomp of the former finds D'Agostino remarking on High's skin's "hepatitis tint", before descending into a feedback jam, anchored by Matt Whipple's melodic bass. The latter, a lilting ballad with Brian Hamilton's beautiful piano and graceful strings, acts as the record's centerpiece, different from anything the band has ever done before. A disappeared victim of child abuse from D'Agostino's youth shows up at a concert, strung out and explaining how his new girlfriend has turned him onto crack. The realization hits D'Agostino, who still only in his twenties, has led a privileged life and is now the leader of a successful band, has no reason to succumb to the trappings of drugs. The friend offers a hit, before D'Agostino confesses "I can't / my heart would explode".

If you thought the record was dipping into a quieter second half, Hamilton lets out a wailing smear of organ to kick off the gargantuan "Laramie". A lyrical masterpiece, recalling a time when D'Agostino and High got caught in a snowstorm in Laramie, Wyoming, the song moves through multiple movements within its eight minutes. D'Agostino once again confronts his worrisome drug habit in the rollicking second half, singing "all alone with my strip mall memories / chasing the same thrills I was when I was eighteen". As a band that has used location as such a key point of their music, the feeling is all too real when D'Agostino sings "your street's just a place / has no memory at all".

Cymbals Eat Guitars have always felt somewhat out of place when it comes to their regional locations; they identified as a New York band with Why There Are Mountains, despite lyrics citing the Pacific Northwest, and on their newest, they settle comfortably into a New Jersey indebted niche. However, the slice of life portraits of "Chambers" and "Lifenet" hark back to Lenses Alien, with references to Staten Island. An unfinished drug deal in "Chambers" (due to how "the feds closed Silk Road") leads to D'Agostino driving up to Stapleton, remaking how Staten Island is "technically NYC / but dear Christ it gets so lonely". "Chambers" is the closest Cymbals Eat Guitars may get to a pop hit (with shades of post-reunion Superchunk), but the downtuned bass of The Wrens indebted "Lifenet" does away with any notions of the band streamlining their sound. It's always a risk for an artist to make a disarmingly autobiographical album, as references to personal events can easily slip through the fingers of listeners; D'Agostino confronts this in the chorus, as he sings "sorry, you don't know these people / so what could this mean to you?". Little does he know how much meaning Lose can convey, from its opener, to the last gasps of "2 Hip Soul".

Why There Are Mountains ended with a whimper and Lenses Alien ended with a scream, so it makes sense for "2 Hip Soul" to be an appropriation of the two. Whipple and drummer Andrew Dole lock into a rhythmic waltz time, as D'Agostino lets dark guitar cascades mesh with Hamilton's piano playing, washing over the song. One can tell the song will be lyrically dense and brilliant from the utterance of the first line: "I learned to scream / to 'Bone Machine' / my windshield spit / was glistening". D'Agostino then steps outside of himself, pinpointing the exact moment innocence was lost for his group of friends. A rich high school peer, Sesta, gets his due for carving swastikas into trees and breaking into Popcorn Park Zoo to club animals to death with PVC piping, when he falls face first into the firepit at a local campground ("we had to find a new place to drink" D'Agostino intones). In the dirge like portion of the song, D'Agostino chronicles his return to Pinelands High School in a whisper ("months pass, and he's back in class / with a compression sleeve, and a mask") before letting out a scream, from both his guitar and throat, about his stoned blue eyes now "snowed in" from a vicodin habit. D'Agostino croons the unsettling "every rich kid's basement smells the same", before the song reaches its hurtling climax.

For all the shows Cymbals Eat Guitars have been playing in New York City, I've been gone for all but one of them. It felt like a necessity to see them, and I instantly jumped on the opportunity to see an incredibly cathartic show at Soho's Apple store, which concluded with D'Agostino ripping his guitar a new one, before writhing on the floor during the climax of "Laramie". The desire to see Cymbals Eat Guitars live was further affirmation of the kind of  band they are. They have filled the shoes of groups like Built to Spill, Modest Mouse, Pavement, 12 Rods, The Dismemberment Plan, and especially The Wrens-- bands that are readily identifiable by their seminal classic records, but seem incapable of repeating said records. The Wrens get a direct reference on "Laramie", as D'Agostino and High have "'I Guess We're Done Duels'" in D'Agostino's car, splitting Kev and Charles' parts (it wouldn't come as a surprise if the "forward 13 months line" is a reference to The Meadowlands' "13 Months In 6 Minutes"), and the comparison comes full circle.

The line between peer and revivalist has always been considerably distinct between the indie rock of the nineties and those who ape from it. A whole generation (mine), must come to terms with the fact that we may never live through some miraculous resurrection of Modest Mouse's heyday, and that can be crushing at times. So Lose comes at the perfect time, ensuring we'll know the songs by hear for the changing of leaves and visibility of breath. The times we play Elliott Smith at dusk, The Dismemberment Plan on train rides home, Sunny Day Real Estate alone in our rooms.When our favorite records make perfect sense, from 12 Rods' Split Personalities to Codeine's The White Birch. It's no doubt these records are classics, considered nearly peerless for the longest time (some recent bands have achieved these ranks, but not many: Titus Andronicus, Japandroids, Fucked Up, Los Campesinos!, The Hotelier). Cymbals Eat Guitars are no longer the inspired ones, but rather peers; the big indie rock band for my generation, and many generations to come.

Cymbals Eat Guitars - Lose
10/10
Recommended Tracks: "Jackson", "Warning", "XR", "Place Names", "Child Bride", "Laramie", "Chambers", "Lifenet", "2 Hip Soul"

A Review of Twin Peaks' "Wild Onion"

It could be quite easy not to like Twin Peaks, the Chicago foursome of some barely twenty year old, rock and roll rabble rousers who most likely are not even familiar with David Lynch's TV drama by the same name. So there's reason one: Twin Peaks chose their name because "it sounded cool". If you're looking for some spooky, Lynchian inspired noise, don't bother reading on. Reason two: they dropped out of college to be in a rock band, a move that proves to be maybe even more educational than some might think (just take one listen to fellow Chicago classicists, Smith Westerns, whose excellent Soft Will showcased maturation and adult sentiments, with lack of a college degree). Reason three: The video for the damn near anthemic "Flavor" finds the four boys engaging in typical teenage debauchery and illicit behavior. Beers are chugged (I'm pretty sure they're not of age), friends take risky dives from rooftops into backyard pools, guitarist (and one of all four vocalists) Clay Frankel uses a parking ticket to roll a joint, and in what some might be a fitting fate, drive their tour van off a cliff. Of course, said cliff leads back to their pool, they prove to be okay, and the beer run is successful!

But even with one listen to even just the band's first, crunchy mini LP, Sunken, it's impossible not to be won over by Twin Peaks' chesty power pop, and the other guitar playin' vocalist Cadien James', who's throaty and stumbling weapon of a voice is the closest thing to Mick Jagger, since, well... Mick himself. But he's not the only one; shades of Paul Westerberg are evident in the voice of bassist Jack Dolan, and Frankel recalls any British singer from the groovy psychedelic era (drummer Connor Brodner shows up for some good ol' gang chorusing). But then there's the music on their newest, and second LP, Wild Onion, packing in Thin Lizzy riffs, Stooges fuzz, Replacements bravado, and even Beatles melody into songs that just barely skirt the three minute and thirty second mark.

And just like you'd expect from boys your age, the majority of songs on Wild Onion are about girls. Members of the female persuasion. But unlike others their age (Avi Buffalo's horndog tendencies, Iceage's stark and bleak aversion), the Twin Peaks dudes kind of seem to know what's up. Clay's watery and wonderful psychedelic nugget "Mirror of Time" ends with a couplet, all posed as a series of questions, which come off as cliched, but with a surprisingly sweet sentiment: "Why does love have to end? / Why do hearts have to break and mend?... Do you believe that love can last forever? / I believe that love can last forever." The infectious "Telephone" blazes ahead like a Who song in miniature (it's no surprise James practically yelps "I went out, to the wasteland!", sounding like Roger Daltrey, just barely scraping those high notes), as James hopes to set aside a world aside for himself and his special lady, all through simple conversations on the telephone.

As Twin Peaks' emotional palette notably expands from the somewhat one note Sunken ("I never used to dig the sunshine much until I smoked some marijuana" still makes me cringe), the production has grown with leaps and bounds as well. Wild Onion begs to be blasted from car stereos with the windows down, but it achieves an impressive feat that not other bands who come from the garage/basement can do: it's a lovely headphones album. One can only truly immerse themselves in the impressive interplay between the dueling guitars of James and Frankel. Take one listen to the stone cold opening, "I Found a New Way", as the squalls of guitar hero glory sound as if they're conversing with each other. The record remains crunchy, yet in yet another dichotomy surrounding Twin Peaks, it's impossibly lush. The smooth jazz interlude of "Stranger World" is a euphoric listen, or if those don't suit your fancy, maybe the flute loops throughout "Mirror of Time". And though the lyrics of "Making Breakfast" recall some pensive alone time in the early parts of the day ("watching the garden grow"), the sax solo in the middle and James' howls tear the whole thing wonderfully apart, while still somehow staying structurally sound.

Twin Peaks have been known to experiment, and tinker with their sound, seeing just how far they can push the garage rock formula to different heights. Sunken had the lovely "Irene" and the gauzy "Ocean Blue", and Wild Onion is rife with these moments; James' scatterbrained description of the album comes as no surprise, citing everything from The Beatles to Jay Reatard. The beginning of "Fade Away" rockets ahead, all bass heavy-- almost like something from Cloud Nothings' Here and Nowhere Else-- before Dolan's nasally whine crashes the party. Don't let the FM guitar line of "Hold On" fool you (it's not an update on .38 Special's "Hold On Loosely"), the song soon descends into a Cocteau Twins haze of reverberated guitar and vocals, with a dash of Tom Petty to sweeten the mix.

Twin Peaks are still some fresh faced boys barely into their twenties, so some mistakes make themselves known along the way. By the third or fourth listen, "Strawberry Smoothie" and "Flavor" start to sound like songs that would play in the climax of some awful college movie. Likewise, "Sloop Jay D"'s lyrics come off like a frat boy come on (but man oh man, you can't argue with that chord progression, the impeccable structuring of the song, and that chorus, that chorus!). Tunes like "Sweet Thing" and "Good Lovin'" soon begin to homogenize into some lifeless radio rock entity, and by the time the modern day Rubber Soul swagger of "Mind Frame" rolls along, you may feel a little exhausted. But when listening to the breathtaking beauty of songs such as "Ordinary People", the time devoted to listening seems suddenly worth it. The sense of camaraderie the Twin Peaks convey is almost enough to warrant your attention; where "Flavor" may be a boilerplate rock song, along with its video, seeing all four of them in their van singing along is enough to warm your heart.

Twin Peaks - Wild Onion
8/10
Recommended Tracks - "I Found a New Way", "Mirror of Time", "Sloop Jay D", "Making Breakfast", "Telephone", "Ordinary People", "Hold On"

Third Eye Diverted: A Review of The Underachievers' "The Lords of Flatbush"

A stately cream-colored house sets the stage for two vagabonds. One is attired like a pirate of the streets of Brooklyn, with a headband and gold earring, coddling a joint. The other lurks between tulle curtains, staring straight at you no matter what angle you are perceiving him from. Mona Lisa in a turquoise snapback, lounging behind a lyrical veil.

The Underachievers' "The Lords of Flatbush" paints a picture of rooms hazy with smoke. Reverberating, distant chords take their time coming to the listener's ears, fogging the background of each song, while hi-hat and snare step forward sharply and accentuate Flatbush Zombies' evident influence on the pair of Brooklyn rappers. The mixtape's sounds could not differ more from what it's cover shows - attentively styled old homes don't mix well with the brain-dead antics of my generation. However, the house reminds me of the house I grew up in, where I would blast Girl Talk and Aesop Rock within the boundaries of plaster walls.

With that nostalgic thought comes the fact that "The Lords of Flatbush" is a well-fitting title for The Underachievers' tape, with it being both a declaration of supremacy and a reference to the classic 1974 film of the same name. The movie "The Lords of Flatbush" follows two young men played by Sylvester Stallone and Perry King through misadventures in Flatbush, forming a gang, chasing women, and the like. The same basic concepts are modeled in The Underachievers' tape years later, with two young men, Issa Gold and AK, roaming the same streets and doing the same things - mobbing ("Catch me in SOHO with my team, we're riding dolo") and lady-chasing ("Back on the map, now your chick all over my aura").

Other similarities exist in that the movie "The Lords of Flatbush" took place in the heyday of New York, while the effort to create the "sound of New York" is a bandwagon that The Underachievers have helped to build in the current heyday of New York rap. The phrase 'the sound of New York' was popularized with examples from Joey Bada$$' "1999", and had similar sounds to The Underachievers' mixtape, "Indigoism". Jazz overlays and complex samples were thrown in with original touches and riffs, and boom-bap style drums kicked from the foreground. This languid style of production and an accompanying change in line delivery largely attributed to the catchiness and popularity of previous Underachievers' songs, such as "Gold Soul Theory", in which neutral vowels were stretched out and swung in to match the backing track.  But The Underachievers have taken a different turn with this style, and while previous songs were more in line with Pro Era's sampled shenanigans, "The Lords of Flatbush" sounds as though those ideas were taken straight to Erick Arc Elliott of Flatbush Zombies for production - which is the case, and likely occured due to the considerable time the two groups have spent together both personally and in concert. Production also includes Lex Luger and EFF.DOPE, the producer of "Sun Through the Rain" off of "Indigoism".

Drawn-out synth chords and a lack of swing takes The Underachievers roots in the sound of New York and diverts them to their own pathway, lauding their successes and grieving the trials of fame all the way. While most tracks on "The Lords of Flatbush" follow this pattern of straight beats and bragging hooks, the track "Melody of the Free" is a nod to Pro Era's sampled beats, with The Underachievers' characteristic synth sounds mingling with lazy jazz - though this song is still not swung, keeping the group in a category apart from most Beast Coast rap groups. As Issa put it in "Leaving Scraps", "'Bout to take 'em up, we evolving", and with the two carving their own sub-genre from the foundation of 'New New York' rap, his words couldn't be truer.

While "The Lords of Flatbush" may differ from The Underachievers' previous projects instrumentally, little has changed lyrically in the styles of Issa Gold and AK. Beats may change, but the duo still deliver rapid-fire lines that hail to positive energy, third eyes, copious amounts of weed, and all that follows. However, new lines sport bragging rights for previous musical successes, as seen on the songs and in the titles of "Leaving Scraps" and "Still Shining", with hooks such as "Gimme that, takin' everything, I'm only leaving scraps". And with successes come trials, as seen on the song "Fake Fans", in which Issa declares "They said they 'bout it, they ain't 'bout it, they ain't with the plan". Altogether, "The Lords of Flatbush" encompasses the entirety of what the pair of Brooklyn rappers has gone through since the release of "Indigoism", making for a fulfilling tape with a clear beginning, middle, and end, leaving only greatness to be expected from their upcoming album, "The Cellar Door".

The Underachievers - "The Lords of Flatbush"

Recommended tracks - "Flexin'", "NASA", "Melody of the Free"

Is It So Strange: A Review of Craft Spells' "Nausea"

Nausea. Nausea. The idea of some kind of eternal, unshakeable sickness is nothing new to those indie bedroom sittin', new wavin', post punkin' loners. At the end of The Cure's 1982 masterpiece Pornography, Robert Smith declared that he had to "fight this sickness" (before offering the very tongue in cheek, "and find the cure"), and continued down the same road of nausea inflected music for the rest of their career. Hell, even Elvis Costello's brilliant This Year's Model has lyrics about "throwing up in the dark". Where I can't quote any off the top of my head, it would be simply asinine to assume that Morrissey never sang a song about a stomachache or two.

However, Craft Spells main man, Justin Paul Vallesteros, sings of a different kind of sickness on the band's long awaited sophomore LP, Nausea; it's not as steeped in violence and depression like The Cure, and not as witty as Costello's finest work. Let it be said, that 2011's modest Idle Labor proved to be my favorite of that whole year, overshadowing (still great) albums by Bon Iver, M83 and Girls. Which in retrospect, comes off as strange. How could a thirty minute, drum machine laden, synthpop record prove to be as monumental as some of those aforementioned works? It's attributed to Vallesteros himself, and his sense of honesty, which differed from many other revivalists of the year. Idle Labor had a somewhat typical narrative arc: boy loses girl, boy meets another girl, boy loses that girl as well, boy realizes he should try and spend some time alone. Stories about parties, making out, sitting in bedrooms with doors shut and fog, all over buoyant new wave instrumentation actually makes for a compelling listen.

Unfortunately, Vallesteros' next step as Craft Spells found him stumbling a bit, as he released the mini album, Gallery. The same synthpop formula grew increasingly stale as tracks like "Sun Trails" inexcusably grated on and on. Ever the perfectionist, Vallesteros has admitted to disliking his first two releases under the Craft Spells guise and upon relocating to sunny San Francisco, found himself increasingly alienated by the indulgence of social media and the modern day music landscape. To write the sketches of what would later become Nausea, Vallesteros decamped to his parents' house in suburban California, taking his whole studio with him. The most surprising part of an already complicated album process was Vallesteros' decision to quit playing guitar for a year, composing the majority of the songs on piano, which he taught himself to play in that same year.

So as the title track swirls to life, there's almost a palpable sense of change in the air, pushed along by a piano, live drums (!) and Vallesteros' crooning voice. Idle Labor's sonic palette felt sometimes unnecessarily limited, but every song on Nausea blooms in comparison. The echoing piano from "Dwindle" sounds as if it's culled directly from Wilco's "Ashes of American Flags", before the song reaches it's swaggering chamber pop midsection. Early highlight "Komorebi" plays like The Cure's "Untitled" engulfing a lesser known Elephant 6 Recording Company artist with it's crashing hi-hats and earworm of a flute loop. The album's most surprising cut, "If I Could", stands out the most for it's muted trip-hop influences, sounding more like King Krule or Tricky than The Radio Dept.

Where Vallesteros also struggled as a vocalist (operating some plateau between a flat Morrissey, Ian Curtis and Jens Lekman), he manages to find some solid footing on Nausea, as his somewhat thin vocals are able to homogenize with the lush and deep instrumentals to an impeccable degree. As Vallesteros' voice floats through the ether, one can hear shades of Robert Smith, Ian Brown, and even Stuart Murdoch at his least fey.

The post-break mope fog might have convinced Vallesteros to cloak his voice in reverb on past recordings, and while still heavily reverberated at times, the vocals are brought more to the forefront, cutting through the mix. Where the lyrics don't provide the same immediacy and relatability of Idle Labor, they still yearn with existential dread and confusion. The title Nausea stems from an inability to deal with modern day society, and a desire to return to whatever world you may have created for yourself. So as Vallesteros sings "this is all I have left to feel", on "Laughing for My Life", it feels like a cry for help rather than a placeholder; similar to the record's best song, "Twirl", in which Vallesteros laments about not knowing what to do over a guitar primed for liftoff in the chorus, which races along as fast as Vallesteros' thoughts (even the jaunty organ solo can't offset the sadness which permeates deep). Some previous territory still ends up being explored however, such as "First Snow", whose vocal melody is borrowed from Craft Spells' still biggest hit, "After the Moment", not out of laziness, but to provide a morning after counterpart, as the solemn piano carries Vallesteros' voice along, sounding lonely as possible.

The ambiguity of such a record as Nausea may be the one true offputting for some, but in the context of Vallesteros' back catalogue, and the record's themes, it proves to be a worthy aspect. When Vallesteros sings of "changing faces" (on the song of the same name), it can apply to a number of different things: social malaise, the frustrations of everyday life, the fresh wounds of the dissolution of a romantic relationship. Same goes for the penultimate track, "Breaking the Angle Against the Tide"; it's the most immediate of the batch, rendered so by weeping strings and a catchy as hell guitar riff (the one true "rock out" moment the record has). Vallesteros sings "in the heart of haze / it's hard to cry / so stay inside... you've wasted too much of time", which comes off as spiteful and venom tinged, but in the essence of the best Craft Spells songs, finds himself moving on from what has plagued him for the past thirty five plus minutes-- this time being the inner turmoil all must experience at some time.

Craft Spells - Nausea
8.5/10
Recommended Tracks - "Nausea", Komorebi", "Changing Faces", "Twirl", "Laughing for My Life", "First Snow", "Breaking the Angle Against the Tide"

Catch Me Now As I Fall: A Review of Parquet Court's "Sunbathing Animal"

Artists that have been featured on Amoeba Music's Webby Award nominated "What's in My Bag" series either take two roads with their selected purchases: totally understandable (Smith Westerns buying Warren Zevon and Smashing Pumpkins, Lou Barlow expressing interest in Ty Segall) to totally unexpected (Ariel Pink purchasing Pentagram, Grimes admitting that she and her bandmates love Sick Puppies). Much like their third album Sunbathing Animal, Parquet Courts' wide array of choices completely do away with whatever preconceived notions one may have with the Texas by way of Brooklyn indie punkers; some choices feel as if they're culled directly from Simon Reynolds' Rip It Up and Start Again novel (The Fall, The Residents, Swell Maps), while others show a deeper appreciation for our classic rock fathers/mothers (Patti Smith, The Bee Gees, R.E.M.), and the last few ones come straight out of the blue (Yoko Ono's Fly, experimental musician Karlheinz Stockhausen's Prozession).

So for those expecting Parquet Courts to delve into the same territories explored on their breakout Light Up Gold may come out of the excellent Sunbathing Animal feeling disappointed, as it acts as more of an expansion on their recent EP, Tally All the Things That You Broke. Frontman and guitarist Andrew Savage is no longer stoned and starving, and his counterpart Austin Brown is no longer referring to his girlfriend as a borealis lit fjord. These thirteen new songs make do on the same "self-evident truths" that Tally All the Things That You Broke as overstuffed lyrics spill out of Brown and Savage's respective mouths over wry and rapid fire post-punk rhythms that, simply put, are pretty damn awesome.

As Parquet Courts' popularity grew and grew throughout 2013, listeners learned more and more of the group's obvious spiritual leader, Brown. In a recent New York Times piece (written only a few months after a performance on Jimmy Fallon, proving that the band really has made it, whatever that even means anymore), Brown proudly expressed his desire to be added to the lineage of classic New York bands: The Velvet Underground, The Ramones, Talking Heads and Sonic Youth. Brown moved from Denton, Texas to Brooklyn at a prime age (early twenties), claiming that he didn't choose his new home "because of any scene", which rings true. Parquet Courts play like Gang of Four or Wire, had they grown up in the Lower East Side, or Stockton, California, and sang of human anatomy, dog walkers, moleskines, dark coffee and how our house pets, acting in a purely metaphorical sense, allow us to realize the blatant redundancy in our everyday lives, asking, are cats really smarter than us?

One could unfortunately assume that Parquet Courts just ooze the classic "slacker" ethos, by taking a listen to the loping, six minute "She's Rolling", which contains almost no lyrical variation ("she's rolling down a hill") and descends into a feedback laden jam, which is hard to distinguish from the suck and blow harmonica solo, in the song's final minutes. Yeah man, everything sounds like Pavement nowadays, doesn't it?

But Parquet Courts don't recall Pavement at all (did they ever?), as they exude their own brand of self professed, "Americana punk". Sure, Light Up Gold had dopey charm, and was recorded in a space of only three days, but Savage and Brown came off much more subtle, intricate and aware than Malkmus; "Careers in Combat" funneled post college ennui into a noodly one minute anthem about military recruitment, and "Yonder Is Closer to the Heart" saw our passing lives measured in laundry bills. So as the band follows the same one-two punch of "Master of My Craft" and "Borrowed Time" with "Bodies Made Of" and "Black and White", all Pavement comparisons slip away as fast as Max Savage's boom-tap-tap drumming; the former featuring Brown claiming that "bodies [are] made of slugs and guts" over coiled guitar riffs that sound as if they can snap at any moment, and the latter, which chugs endlessly ahead in good ol' Velvet Underground fashion, as Savage finds himself referencing high art by "racing down the stairs in a nude decision", while seeing in "black and white" all as he grapples with some profound inner turmoil: "do I bother to define myself beyond what they allow? / Have I already forgotten how?"

The lyrics on Sunbathing Animal seem to be considerably weirder than anything on Light Up Gold at initial listen, but soon, certain chunks of phrases and marble-mouthed couplets hit you in the face like gobs of saliva, sticking to you as they slide away. "Dear Ramona"'s I'm-smarter-than-you-but-also-increasingly-bored Jonathan Richman feel recalls one of the nineties most unsung heroes, Cake, as Brown rattles on about some mysterious, black coffee drinking, moleskine writing, sexually elusive femme fatale. "Raw Milk" distills Red Red Meat's Bunny Gets Paid into a languid ode to a dog walker, shedding away the rust and chipped paint of the aforementioned record, as guitars dizzily stumble along.

At a colossal forty-six minutes (quite long for an album, by punk rock's standards), the album's pacing proves to be one of it's strongest feats. The slow burners are able to nestle in nicely between slices of caustic post-punk landscapes, that thrive off Sonic Youth feedback and breakneck speed. "Vienna II" nicely separates the stoned, squalid anatomy ruminating "What Color Is Blood" from the surf-punk barnburner "Always Back in Town", which boils down tour life to a few essential lines: "I'm always back in town / according to you". Brown's appreciation of fine art and literature plays into the sequencing, as the album seems to play in four acts. "Sunbathing Animal" races along in the fashion of The Ramones, before giving way to the instrumental "Up All Night", segueing into the record's impeccable fourth act.

In said act exists the impossibly tense and surprisingly dense "Ducking and Dodging", which strips the band down to it's bare necessities, with Sean Yeaton's bass acting as the anchor for the remainder of the instruments performing as staccato as possible, as Brown pens the best lyrics he's ever written to date: "all my friends are disappearing / all my letters are in code... waiting by the silent telephone / I draft my next apology / burn my letters once they're read / unalloyed joy / I thrice repeat". Of course, then there's record's true standout piece, the slow burning, seven minute, "Instant Disassembly". Brown takes on the weary souls of Jagger and Dylan at their most defeated, as the Stonesy ballad unfolds lyrically, as the same power strumming and weeping guitar line play off into infinity. Brown is at his most emotionally open, sounding like a man who'd rather just drink the day away and listen to his favorite records; so it comes as no surprise that some choice lyrics are, "I kept explaining I was too tired to continue to speak", "the last classic rock band's last solid record creeps in / a call out from the blue, from an old, old friend", "I can't breathe, I can't breathe / it's hard to inhale".

But for all this talk, Sunbathing Animal is just what it is: a damn fine rock and roll record, the one that will shut up all naysayers, who claim "they don't make them like they used to". Parquet Courts' music is an amalgamation of the past century of rock music, as Brown and Savage vent their twentieth century blues (Savage himself is an avowed blues fan) through rapid-fire (seemingly) free verse poetry. They exist in an all too small group of artists who channel the entire history of rock and punk, while still crafting something that's uniquely their own (2014 saw a large crop in these artists, all making excellent records, like Ought's More Than Any Other Day, Posse's Soft Opening and even Fucked Up's Glass Boys). At it's core, Sunbathing Animal sounds just like the beginning for an already exceptionally talented band, which many feared (myself guiltily included) would burn out too early, after ten months of nearly incessant touring. But even in such a short span of time, Parquet Courts have expanded on what made them great, maturing flawlessly in the process. Or, as Brown sings on the bluesy, piano tinged closer, "Into the Garden", "you're not the same old fool you once thought yourself to be".

Parquet Courts - Sunbathing Animal
9/10
Recommended Tracks - "Bodies Made Of", "Black and White", "Dear Ramona", "What Color Is Blood", "Always Back in Town", "Sunbathing Animal", "Instant Disassembly", "Ducking and Dodging", "Raw Milk", "Into the Garden"