Wild Nothing – Life of Pause (Captured Tracks, 2016)
Life of Pause unfolds in three distinct phases: tropical rainforest pop, dream pop in the key of love and a sound reminiscent of The Smiths minus Morrissey. The first category is most prominent on the first song, “Reichpop,” which would pair nicely with a fruity cocktail. The xylophone runs wild like vines in a forest, complemented by what can only be described as breezy bamboo flutes. The album undeniably jumps into The Smiths adulation on “Japanese Alice,” a nicely-formulated pop rock tune. Next, the album’s title track evokes an ‘80s synthpop band hit hard by feelings of deep love. This sound pours over into the next song “Alien,” where singer Jack Tatum repeats the lyric “You made me feel like an alien,” aided by hard-hitting synths. Though Life of Pause is primed for play at your nearest Urban Outfitters, don’t let that deter you.
The days when the minds of Max Bloom and Daniel Blumberg came together to create Yuck’s first self-titled album are gone. Blumberg left the band to pursue other projects, but for one moment in time, this London four-piece captured the attitude of mid-’90s indie rock subculture 15 years after the era ended. With Bloom now providing the bulk of the vocals and songwriting, Stranger Things sounds rigid and overly formulaic compared to their vulnerable and candid 2011 album. By distorting the vocals in each song, the album tries to sound hip but ends up sounding more like it’s drowning under water. However, songs like “Cannonball” and “Hold Me Closer” are clever and drenched in so much fuzzy distortion you could almost pet it. Stranger Things is like a less annoying Weezer, which isn’t exactly a bad thing.
Zachary Cole Smith has settled comfortably into his refined dream-pop sound and this both pushes and limits Is The Is Are. If this album was shorter, it’d be a spiritual escape into Smith’s heavy and dark melodies played by light, reverb and delay-soaked guitars. However, Is The Is Are is too indulgent; the album drones on for 17 songs that all sound similar. “Dopamine” serves as a catchy gem in an album without a clear progression. Each song is individually solid however: “Mire (Grant’s Song)” is another standout tune where Smith nails that dreamy, dark confusion he’s become known for. Even if Is The Is Are doesn’t explore new creative paths, it features enough to be worth a trip.
Ty Segall’s new album Emotional Mugger sounds like a Ty Segall album: loud guitars, a fuzzy, melodic low end and Segall’s faux British accent chiming in. The album is made up of songs indistinguishable from one another, each showcasing an guitar solo as interesting as a running tap. Emotional Mugger has a circus-like whimsy that occasionally recalls The Beatles’ Magical Mystical Tour, especially on “Breakfast Eggs.” This is Segall’s first solo release since 2014’s Manipulator, a much more refined record. Emotional Mugger is a listenable mess of dull confusion that lacks direction, like a really good jam session. In other words, it’s a lesser Ty Segall album. It could be worse.
With their high-energy garage rock, Tijuana Panthers are sure to keep you warm through the harsh winter.
With winter in full effect, these hot bands may be our only saviours
Montreal becomes a desert in January and February because the tired tires on a band’s tour van can’t trudge through the mounds of snow. They’re right to stay away—Montreal is less inviting when the cold is biting. Here are bands we can only dream of coming to our city-size freezer and whose songs will keep you warm—but not literally.
With their high-energy garage rock, Tijuana Panthers are sure to keep you warm through the harsh winter.
Heaters
Crank up Heaters to warm your winter. This Michigan trio lays down a thick layer of grainy psychedelia that’ll coat you with warmth like a cozy coat. Contrasting clean 1960s rock and roll riffs with crunchy vocals you won’t understand a word of, Heaters aren’t afraid to turn beach music into something grittier. Their 7-inch Mean Green, released in April 2015, is available for sale on Bandcamp for US$7.50 if you’re willing to lower your hydro bill and live off the heat you’ll make from dancing. “No Fuss” off the album is a jangly mid-tempo song that’s as dreamy as it is grimy.
Tijuana Panthers
It’s been said that if you put cocaine on your rider in Tijuana, the venue delivers. Tijuana Panthers’ music is euphoric in a similar way. This Long Beach, CA, trio channels the energy from barreling Long Beach waves and serves up a garage rock sound sick with nostalgia. Their latest album, POSTER, sounds like Brit pop set out to lay in the California sun only to shrivel in the sand and soak in a pool. POSTER travels back to bygone eras of danceable garage pop. Book a ticket to the warmer coast with a listen to “Boardwalk,” and strap in for some California romanticism.
Elvis Depressedly
Even though Elvis Depressedly hit up Montreal in October of last year opening for The Front Brothers, this king of sulky lo-fi pop deserves to be the main attraction. A song like “New Alhambra,” off the 2015 album of the same name, is the perfect soundtrack to a day spent inside avoiding a storm. Working with wobbly melodic guitar and often employing broken equipment, frontman Mat Cothran sings languidly about being depressed and feeling a lot of things, or feeling nothing at all. Let Elvis Depressedly’s simple yet poignant lyrics lull you into your warm winter coma.
Ween
In a statement announcing their Colorado reunion shows, this infamously weird duo said that the shows are “going to be fucking mind-blowing.” A mix of strange pitch modulation and effects, some of the oddest most unnecessarily descriptive lyrics, and rock and roll melodies that resemble the end result of Pink Floyd stuffed into a meat grinder, seeing Ween perform is like spotting the rarest bird in the Amazon. The oddities and combined musical prowess that sprouted their cultish fan base will keep your ears busy for days while you try to decipher exactly what the hell is happening on their albums.
From odes to objects to plastering fresh faces on creatures they’ve imagined, Haha is less of an album and more of a series of brief, impromptu sonic art pieces. In their self-described mindset called “Vada Vada”, songwriters Wyatt and Fletcher Shears experiment in their playground of creative anarchy. The duo could be described as post-punk, but that’d go against “Vada Vada” values; instead, the minimalist instruments (only a bass and drums), the pre-recorded sounds that range from creepy to corny, and the twins’ impulsive lyrics turn the sound into a vibrant potpourri. Touching on Dadaism, their lyrics balance disinterest and wild catchiness. The vocals on “This Could Build us a Home” would suit a motel’s basement rec room, but, really, Haha could make a home for itself anywhere. Under the veil of “Vada Vada”, The Garden exists everywhere.
This week’s genre takes your least-favourite class and makes it way more hardcore
Take the stereotype of a bunch of nerds crunching numbers in math class, apply it to music and you get a complex, sweaty and often beautiful thing called math rock.
Graphic by Charlotte Bracho.
Math rock is all about complex time signatures, stop and start polyrhythms and angular, frayed riffs. Somewhere around the late 1980s and early 1990s, noise rock and post-hardcore outfits began experimenting with new dissonant chords and song structures, throwing out the standard 4/4 time signatures in favour of asymmetrical 7/8 and putting a greater emphasis on calculated atmosphere.
Many of the genre’s earliest examples are indebted to the sounds that came before, blending the intensity of post-hardcore with these new chaotic song structures; San Diego outfit Drive Like Jehu are one such band. Combining the harsh intensity of noise rock and the yelped manic vocal stylings of post-hardcore with off-kilter rhythms and incredibly precise drumming, the band released two widely acclaimed albums of increasing mathematical complexity before disbanding. Though their career was short-lived, their influence is still felt today.
Perhaps the single most important band to contribute to the genre’s genesis was Kentucky-based quartet Slint, a math rock band of incredible ambition and sonic breadth. Though their debut, the criminally overlooked Tweez serves as a noisy class in math rock’s fundamentals, even enlisting Big Black frontman Steve Albini on production duties, the band’s sophomore album, Spiderland, has attained legendary status as a central pillar of the genre. Largely credited with establishing many of post-rock’s key tropes, namely the genre’s sparse crescendo-based structure, Spiderland is a haunting experimental opus of startling rhythmic diversity and artful propensity absolutely brimming with fresh ideas even today.
With the turn of the 21st century came a shift in math rock’s general focus, with bands like Don Caballero and Tera Melos switching to a more noodly and riff-based format. Some math rock bands tend to hang in limbo somewhere between jazz and emo, most notably Japan’s melancholic instrumental outfit Toe, Oxford-based TTNG (formerly This Town Needs Guns) and Irish post-rock/math rock hybrid Enemies. This added emphasis on technical virtuosity comes with a firm grasp on melody, often working together to create some truly evocative and sharp pieces.
According to a 2006 Pitchfork interview with Chavez guitarist Matt Sweeney, “[Math rock] was invented by a friend of ours as a derogatory term for a band me and James played in called Wider. But his whole joke is that he’d watch the song and not react at all, and then take out his calculator to figure out how good the song was. So he’d call it math rock, and it was a total diss, as it should be,” he said.
With the return of genre pioneers like Shellac and the increasing popularity of more modern outfits like Battles, 65daysofstatic and, to an extent, Oxford’s successful Foals, math rock has seeped its way into the public consciousness. Through its versatility and various tonal modes, math rock has confidently escaped its origins as a niche spinoff of art punk, providing something for just about anyone. Don’t let its name fool you; you don’t need a foundation in calculus to understand and enjoy what this mathematical subgenre has to offer.
Finding focus in fragile vocals and wet, nervy guitar, Alex Giannascoli is the middle man between his tender world where he crafts his long melancholic melodies. Playing in a pool of tone and pitch modulation, Giannascoli isn’t writing songs alone in his Pennsylvania bedroom anymore. New characters carry these songs, like the little creature singing at the end of the instant buzzing hit “Bug.” Gifted with a neat trick, Giannascoli can keep a melody spinning like a basketball on his finger. He opens every chord in the hall until the refrain softly resolves itself. Beach Music ranges from comfortably settling into Giannascoli’s warm persona to jumping into eerie dissonance. The changing face of the album gives it a lively buoyancy, as if Giannascoli beckoned to the monsters under his bed and they thrashed about in a frenzy of new sounds.
Though progressing, rock’s ties with masculinity still linger today
“What’s it like to be a girl in a band? I don’t quite understand.”
Graphic by Charlotte Bracho.
That one line from Sonic Youth’s song “Sacred Trickster” had its embers burning in my psyche for a while. Noise-grunge icon Kim Gordon breathily yells it out in the song; her tone touches on annoyance. It’s probably a question she’s been asked many times. The line must’ve also resonated with Gordon too because she named her memoir, Girl in a Band, after the lyric.
The lyric, a dormant rhyme for a while, sprung from its inactivity when my former band, Bitter Old Man, played our first show. I hadn’t really thought about being the only girl in the band—the only difference between my bandmates and I was that I struggled to lift the heavier equipment due to my petite stature. While we were in the process of loading the gear into the venue, I had my guitar strapped around me to tune it.
The show organizer was handing out drink tickets. He approached my three other bandmates, handed them their ticket, and then looked around the little venue for the fourth band member. He saw me tuning my guitar, came up to me and asked if I was “in the band?” I told him I was. Even though I had lugged equipment in, set-up pedals, and had a guitar strapped around my shoulders, he seemed shocked to find out that a rather innocent-looking girl was in this noise-alt-shoegaze-rock-(maybe jazz fusion?) band. I thought about it a little later, and it occurred to me that if I had dressed differently and presented myself in that classic “rock aesthetic” (leather? piercings?), then maybe he wouldn’t have gaped his mouth at my answer.
“Do you want to look cool, or do you want to look attractive?” Gordon was once asked by photographer Michael Lavine, The Guardian reported. Even though cultivating an image for an artist is a major part of making music, the focus on a woman’s image is much sharper. Recently, Bethany Cosentino, frontwoman of Best Coast read a concert review of her show where the reviewer wrote about Cosentino’s outfit rather than her music and performance. “Sexism is alive and well people!!!!! This literally makes my blood boil,” she wrote on her Instagram. “If you aren’t happy with my show that’s perfectly fine, but leave my looks [and] outfit out of it.”
A line can be drawn between Costentino’s recent experience and what Gordon said in an interview published by The Guardian, “the male music writers were cowardly in person. They would then go home and write cruel, ageist things. I assumed they were terrified of women,” Gordon said. “Women aren’t allowed to be kick-ass. I refused to play the game,” she continued. Wardrobe and image shouldn’t take precedent over the music, or, in my case, assumptions of musical ability shouldn’t be based on appearance. Practice for years, throw on whatever you want, and that’s that.
FIDLAR want you to listen to this album now, because soon you’ll grow up, and you’ll sober up, and then life’ll suck. These SoCal punks have some deeper issues jutting out from their lyrics. Under the raw scream-along hooks and the crunchy guitars mixed into every corner, singer Zac Carper howls about chronic loneliness on “40 oz. On Repeat” and his and friends’ glorified debaucherous youth on “West Coast.” Too was released almost three years after FIDLAR’s self-titled firecracker album. By now, all the kids who originally tore up the walls of the band’s sold-out shows are inching closer to adulthood, and so is the band. Too explores all the angles of early-twenties nihilism and tries to sweat it out on songs like “Why Generation” and “Drone,” which is probably alluding to the perception that nine-to-fivers are robotic droids. Despite the odd interludes, like when Carper whines about a failed relationship, Too sounds like it’s tearing through the lining in your ears, especially on the first three golden songs. The album’s just another dispenser for FIDLAR to share their wisdom about how to live life, because Fuck it, Dog. Life’s a Risk.
Trial track: “The Punks are Finally Taking Acid”
Rating: 9/10
Montreal artists collaborate to go above and beyond
A constant sub-bass low frequency shot across the room from the Rialto’s stage throughout the night. The deep shuddering shook the elaborately-carved walls and extended up the wooden bannister. Had there been a chandelier, it probably would have wobbled off its hook.
The source of this sub-bass were small space-like analog consoles glowing above the audience. Opener Hraïr Hratchian was the ominous figure on stage, playing traditional liturgical Armenian melodies on his duduk (which looks like a wooden flute). The middle-eastern-sounding progressions Hratchian drew from the dainty instrument hung high above the sub-bass ravaging the venue—like a battle between light and dark. Despite the Rialto’s air-conditioning pelting the audience in the face, Hratchian’s performance was a direct flight to the desert where you could wander around solo, if you were willing to close your eyes and go there.
Hratchian bowed and left the stage to a second wave of applause. Soon after, more equipment was wheeled onto the stage: three kick drums, some percussion instruments lying on the floor, more analog, and finally, Radwan Ghazi Moumneh of Jerusalem in my Heart walked on.
Moumneh wore a suit and amber sunglasses, sometimes holding what looked like rosary beads. He began by admitting he usually never talks before a performance, but that his heart was heavy due to the refugee crisis happening in and around Syria. All the musicians who had taken the stage that night agreed to donate their profits from the show to a Syrian aid fund.
Moumneh then dove into his performance, singing in a way that was reminiscent of a call to prayer; rapid, high, but sitting on some syllables. The sub-bass kicked in again, but this time the low frequencies varied, sometimes pulsating, but always overdriving the speakers. Moumneh’s performance is difficult to describe; he’s got a feel for frequencies and electronics, and paired this with electric beats. He sang a cappella for the first song, and then he stopped abruptly with an exclamation from the bass and a “Ha!”
This jolted the crowd out from the desert and into a dystopian world projected on the backstage wall: an abandoned beachside hotel, a film roll of three young boys running, a half-constructed building. He played the buzuk, which is like a long-fretted lute. His buzuk-playing chimed psychedelically over the other layers. More members joined him onstage, banging the kick drums, keeping-up the middle eastern melodies that sounded so fresh to our North American ears.
Then the long-awaited collaboration took place. Psychedelic art band Suuns and Moumneh, who’ve been longtime friends, blended their musical styles together better and more uniquely than any other collaboration I’ve heard. The pre-existing commonalities between both artists were their overall tendency towards psychedelic music, their krautrock-like consistent and elongated beats stretching over entire songs, and their eagerness to get lost in the samples and sounds. Moumneh was the clear leader into the middle-eastern world of riffs; Suuns’ main contribution was to jump in powerfully to emphasize climactic points. The band’s’ loud samples and spectral outbursts created a wall of sound that turned viscous under the psychedelic rock riffs, sometimes Pink Floyd-ish, and often times Black Rebel Motorcycle Club-ish.
During their song “Gazelles in Flight,” Suuns’ drummer Liam O’Neill and vocalist/guitarist Ben Shemie brought a hi-hat downstage and started hitting it along to the pre-recorded sample beat. Shemie, after hitting the hi-hat at a rapid speed for a good 10 minutes, began to appear distressed and looked around at his bandmates for assurance. O’Neil, also hitting the hi-hat, did not see Shemie’s worried look because his eyes were calmly closed in concentration. Shemie did make it to the end without quitting, though. Keyboardist Max Henry, stationed next to Moumneh, manned the synths and equipment. Struck by passion and the deep vibrations of the pulsing sub-bass, he was leaning so close to Moumneh that his head almost rested on Moumneh’s shoulder. Their albums don’t even begin to convey the super supernatural sounds they achieved Wednesday night at POP Montreal, so, next time, catch them.
A brief guide to stompboxes you can use to pimp out your pedalboard
Coloured like candy and shaped like jewelry boxes, pedals aren’t only adorable; these little powerhouses make a world of difference when it comes to sound.
Some pedal boards, pretty like assorted flowers, are so elaborate that they can take years to create. Finding the right sound is often all about finding the right pedals. They can open the doors to new genres that a clean sound could never reach. Here’s a list of four pedals you need, or your money back.
Compressor:
Photo by Mia Pearson.
Compresssssssssssssssssor pedals promote an even tone while playing, and they’ll sustain a note so you can add 47 seconds to your EP—just feeling that note, man. In other words, the quiet sounds get louder and the louder sounds get quieter. It allows you to adjust the attack, which means you can soften the onset of a note.
I’ve got a Boss Compression Sustainer CS-3 that works wonders. Now hold on, Kanyes of the pedal world, let me finish. Boss did do a good job with their compressor pedal, so lay off. (It’s blue and super cute).
Distortion:
Photo by Mia Pearson.
Broken or misused equipment was the catalyst for distortion to break its way onto the scene. Distortion pedals “clip” an instrument’s audio signal, making it sound, well, distorted. To begin, here’s a short ode to the Big Muff pedal. This specific pedal is produced by the Electro-Harmonix company based in New York City. The pedal blurs the lines between being a distortion or fuzz pedal, but it’s been used by so many guitarists that it’s too cool for categories. It’s been heavily used by Jimi Hendrix and on every subsequent Pink Floyd album since Animals, according to Gilmorish. Forbes also provides a list of artists who are Muff users: The White Stripes’ Jack White, U2’s The Edge, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, Primus, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Parliament, Queens of the Stone Age, Dinosaur Jr.
Mascis described how he based Dinosaur Jr.’s whole sound off of his deluxe version of the pedal in Fuzz: The Sound That Revolutionized the World.
I’ve got a Boss Distortion DS-1X, and it’s insanely powerful. Buy it if you hate your neighbours.
Speaking from my own experience, I haven’t found a better delay pedal than the Tokai TDL-1 Delay. There’s three knobs: the delay time, the echo level and the feedback level. The echo level regulates the balance between the delay sound and the direct sound, and the feedback determines the frequency of the delay repeat. If you crank up these last two, putting emphasis on the delay sound and jolting up the frequency, the pedal kind of gets caught on itself, for lack of a better description. You can start quickly turning the delay time knob and what comes out is a “flying saucer” kind of otherworldly sound—the kind of raw effect you’d hear on a Radiohead album.
A delay pedal guarantees childish hours of fun-un-un…
Overdrive:
Photo by Mia Pearson.
Living without an overdrive pedal should drive you crazy. This pedal mimics the sound of the valves in an amp being cranked to 11, when the tubes are pushed to the brink and deliver that crunchy grunge sound. The drive knob regulates gain, and the tone knob adjusts the treble. You can use the overdrive pedal on an amp that’s already overdriven, giving the sound an extra kick and a fatter, saturated sound.You can also hit the pedal on a clean amp which’ll give the sound a cleaner overdrive more suited to blues or jazz. According to GuitarFella and other publications, the most recommended overdrive pedal is the Ibanez TS8o8 Tube Screamer. It was Stevie Ray Vaughan’s signature pedal. So why not drive to your nearest music store and pick one up?
