Startingly, the sameness in the Psychedelic Rock of Secret Colours is not keeping me away from their self-titled album. I think it might be the drums that do this, because while there’s psychedelic’s typical overwash of guitars and voices, Justin Frederick’s drums really add great texture. Add to this the album benefits from nice production–rich bass sounds, front-loaded guitars, atmospheric vocals, and very live drums. Secret Colours are at their most pop-accessible on the move-ahead opener, “Redemption.” Unfortunately that’s followed up by the spaced out “Chemical Swirl,” probably better batting number 6 or 7 in the lineup, because track 3 “Lava” adds more to cause of drawing in the listener than “Chemical Swirl.” Let yourself get drawn back in by “Lava” and make it to the country-grooving “Love,” the gorgeous, Galaxie 500-like “Some Might Say,” and the acoustic-led, cosmic “Jellybean” recalling Charlatans UK or Stone Roses.
Category: Atmospheric/Prog/Psych Rock
In the Music Spectrum categories (see sidebar), the one called Atmoshperic/Psych/Prog covers a lot of territory which means the bands settled into that category can seem pretty disparate. Prog Rock’s excesses seem a far cry from some of the indie bands that might be considered Atmospheric. Yet, that’s where I placed the Tragically Hip. Despite their ability to craft a forward moving song, there’s definitely a way in which their songs create moving worlds illustrated by chords, lyrics, and rhythms. (For more explanation, see the retrospective review of Day for Night).
It’s in this same vein that Wintersleep gets placed in Atmospheric category. Like the Tragically Hip, Wintersleep hails from Canada, coupling Band Rock with keyboard-led spaciousness, aural contemplations of starry skies and bigger worlds, charged by electrified guitars riffing their way to the front of your consciousness. Much like how the Church (the band) stood at the edge of nighttime horizons chanting harmonies over rock ‘n’ roll, Wintersleep’s New Inheritors musically seeks out an inner space that’s connected to far-flung universes.
“Western Days” has a 50’s crooner hint like a ballad from Chris Isaak, although Gabriel Mintz’s voice comes from a different element. The song that opens Volume One has these guitars that lurk in the background, reeling and electrifying like very distant lightning on the horizon. And so Mintz introduces us to himself, a songwriter who covers much territory as he slides around that horizon, never quite coming center on your map, so that you can never be certain that you’ve described your destination.
“Sofa Bed” picks up the Isaak beat, echoes in a rockabilly feel, and lets the track cook along on Trent Moorman’s drums. Yet, it’s the sprawling, brooding “Desert Sky” that perhaps most gives way to the comparisons to Jim Morrison with Mintz’s voice taking on the ethereal, Lizard King poetic, spoken-jazz chant. That shifts the whole album in a different direction on the compass. The tempo comes on a bit more country-like for “Spinning,” but we do get a chance to stay in the ethereal. “Firefly” completes this trilogy of what seem like Morrison-inspired jaunts.
Funky, fuzzy bass and guitar break up the album for “Safeway.” Then “Miles High” brings back a country feel for a stomp that opens up things again to rockabilly hints and moving ahead towards a straight-forward road. Things slow to a crawl for “Atom Bomb,” which feels the weakest here. The album closes with a return to brooding on a grooving vamp for “Excitement Shows,” and Morrison shows up again.
The atmospheric banjo leads toward these warm piano chords before the song really picks up. These are the opening strains of the Acorn’s No Ghost as “Cobbled from Dust” leads off an album which shares a lot with Southerly. It’s an ethereal AltFolk—rich, enveloping, and with just enough groove to leave you leaning forward in your seat as you wait for the song to develop to that point.
“Restoration” clicks along with an AltCountry lilt. Similar to Justin Beckler’s blues-drenched folk, “I Made the Law” comes out of a country blues corner while the electric guitar charges forward with great crashes. You might expect a song named “Bobcat Goldwraith” to be a throw away, but it actually has a tender guitar line, an inspiring tom tom rhythm, an anthemic chorus, and a drum circle-like feel.
Southerly: Champion of the Noisy Negativist EP
Speaking of Southerly, earlier in 2010 Krist Krueger’s project released Champion of the Noisy Negativist, a 5-song instrumental EP. Haunting as it starts with “Trials,” the EP then turns melancholic with the title track. “Repercussions” vamps on Krueger’s piano with its hopeful strains amid drum machine static. While not created in the cut-and-paste sound sample way of Decomposure, there’s a way in which these songs are crafted with the same looping feel.
This album will be released on September 7.
The atmospheric banjo leads toward these warm piano chords before the song really picks up. These are the opening strains of the Acorn’s No Ghost as “Cobbled from Dust” leads off an album which shares a lot with Southerly. It’s an ethereal AltFolk—rich, enveloping, and with just enough groove to leave you leaning forward in your seat as you wait for the song to develop to that point.
“Restoration” clicks along with an AltCountry lilt. Similar to Justin Beckler’s blues-drenched folk, “I Made the Law” comes out of a country blues corner while the electric guitar charges forward with great crashes. You might expect a song named “Bobcat Goldwraith” to be a throw away, but it actually has a tender guitar line, an inspiring tom tom rhythm, an anthemic chorus, and a drum circle-like feel.
Southerly: Champion of the Noisy Negativist EP
Speaking of Southerly, earlier in 2010 Krist Krueger’s project released Champion of the Noisy Negativist, a 5-song instrumental EP. Haunting as it starts with “Trials,” the EP then turns melancholic with the title track. “Repercussions” vamps on Krueger’s piano with its hopeful strains amid drum machine static. While not created in the cut-and-paste sound sample way of Decomposure, there’s a way in which these songs are crafted with the same looping feel.
Pocket T-shirts. Growing up in the 70’s, I looked up to my older cousins. They wore jeans and pocket T-shirts, so that’s what epitomized cool.
Wake Up Lucid is the music of the pocket T-shirt. Their debut EP, Look Alive People, is drenched in the waters of 70’s classic and psychedelic rock. The L.A. band wields guitars as power tools in the garage working on cars. They employ rhythms to bang down society’s norms like vandals in vacant, half-finished houses. Yet, they can strum out an acoustic pattern (“Words”) like Clock Hands Strangle on an AltCountry beat. They jam out on a bluesy vamp even while bringing on some headbanging (“A Minor”). Like other 70’s minded bands such as Parlor Mob or Invade Rome, Wake Up Lucid takes you back 40 years in rock ‘n’ roll only to bring you much farther forward than you thought you were.
Bridges & Blinking Lights
In that same vein, Bridges & Blinking Lights on their Heros, Guns & Snakes play psychedelic/prog rock that sweats with the blues. “Undercover” opens the album as it jams along. While they “sing gloria hallelujah” on “Home Free,” it’s a kind of Appalachian takes on 70’s rock. “Solo American” begins with a clear nod to the guitar-led bands of the 70’s with its bluesy vamp sliding through the scales before going into the song’s twangy core. It’s capped off with a return to the bluesy vamp. Makes the album worth it right there.
Something about a muggy, storm-brewing afternoon sent me back to the atmospheric hard rock of 
Karnivool’s Sound Awake, released in the U.S. back in February. Orchestrated guitar riffs, warning siren keyboards, and rusty-and-angular percussion all swirl the sky on tracks like “Goliath.” The humidity drives everybody to the edge on “Set Fire to the Hive.” Karnivool makes music for a city pushed to riot or celebrate or so combination of both even while a vicious tornado is about to drop down out of the spinning clouds. “Umbra,” a blues-touched ballad, finds you standing at the top of a hill calling out about the scene or perhaps hiding away, “I’ll sleep ‘til it’s over.” On “Illumine,” the crashing hail cuts a mean groove rhythm on the roof.
At 12 minutes long, “Deadman” takes the atmospheric world of the Church with the addition of Prog Rock. Then again it’s also like Gooding in how it grooves along its epic path. After nearly seven minutes, the lyrics declare, “I don’t want this to end,” and indeed, the song starts building again until the 10 minute mark when it all disappears. Chimes and a breathy vocal, carried by a Pink Floyd/The Wall-like guitar lick, lead right into the album’s last track, “Change.”
“Change” opens with noise and riffs as if from Jan Hammer and the Miami Vice soundtrack done through a hard rock lens. It would make a gritty scene of Sonny Crockett coming out from being undercover, shaking off the necessary high, and trying to remember who he was.
Oh, Queen! Excessive, progressive, theatrical, bombastic, acrobatic. On, Queen! Take center stage on Shapiro’s self-titled album, baring your heart-on-sleeve, a musical monologue caught in the spotlight, with the 70’s keyboard hitting those dramatic intervals and fills. Oh, Queen! Arms outstretched, singing for the third balcony, your love lying at your feet like an opera’s final act.
Shapiro accessorizes that Queen sound in just enough places to make a fresh appearance. Guitar riff fills and the quick-paced vocal on “L-E-A-V-I-N-G,” plus the Bay City Rollers spelled out shout, cause the track to click along even when in its more anthemic places. “All Things Around the Sun” has these instrumental breaks which come closest to the urgency and hard-edge of the piano-driven rock of Crash Kings.
As 2008 comes to a close, I’m still going back to my notebooks and finding the reviews that never made it to the Web. Call it the 2008 Close Out collection of reviews.
With My Morning Jacket atmospherics, Black Mountain presents their second full-length, In the Future. They’ve got prog rock’s expansive wash and orchestrated narrative turns.
Watch how on “Tyrants” Black Mountain takes you through a whole spectrum of sounds. There’s the Rush-like intro followed by a fuzz keyboard and funeral dirge drum. They don’t leave you there, but instead offer up a 60’s psychedelic pick me up. Right on its heels, there’s some soulful 70’s rock with a dose of Heart. Add an AC/DC bridge then a Bon Iver/Neil Young closing verse.
“Angels” comes on with a bluesy flair. “Wucan” has a Southern Rock mystique with a psychedelic mysteriousness. “Stay Free” pairs the falsetto of Bon Iver with some Led Zeppelin acoustic guitar. Then it sounds like Gene Krupa kicks off “Evil Ways” with “Sing, Sing, Sing” drums that land into a freeform, soul, jazz hard rock. “Wild Wind” begins with a “Sunday Bloody Sunday”-like drums—a bit slowed down—as an intro which goes into a Pink Floyd-type ballad. Finally, the 16 minute 40 second tribal meditation of “Bright Lights” seems like a folkified song from Husker Du’s Zen Arcade mantra collection.
A My Morning Jacket show is a study in contrasts. It’s wide-legged stance guitarists doing classic rock. It’s hair-flying hard rock. There’s jumping and kicking like the Boss is on E. Street. Then sometimes there’s country twanging keyboards.
The soul music classics that were the pre-show music hinted at the soul/pop influences on Evil Urges, whose songs became soaring rhythms on stage. At times, there were hints of Bob Dylan going electric with the Band, and the Band went on to become something on their own—folk-influenced rock, ethereal country, Woodstock jam. Couple that with the classic rock, and it’s Van Halen from the hills coming down in the old Chevy pick up, Uncle Wilco-ed, Drivin’ ‘n’ Cryin’.
My Morning Jacket is a jazz mess of a jam band. It’s the prog rock-like atmospherics of “Fly Like an Eagle” that Steve Miller could only imagine. Yet, it’s also blazing music that fills the arena as the home team takes the ice for the third period. It’s Kenosha, Wisconsin’s 95 WIIL Rock coming out of the stereo while being on the beach for people who didn’t stop listening in 1978.
Experiencing My Morning Jacket at Milwaukee’s Riverside Theater left me overwhelmed, fully enveloped, caught up in the music and lights, which for me surprisingly turned into a Holy Spirit-led, sensory-overload prayer time. I just kept wishing that all of the trouble of the world would fall away, and we could truly just be worshiping God with an even fuller force than I saw on stage that night. It was a glimpse of what it means that the angels are forever praising Jesus—until the guy behind us vomited his Pabst Blue Ribbons on the floor.
