Rain Rabbit, Rain Rabbit (self-released)
So some guy from Chicago named Kyle Brauch sent me a random email to try to get some attention for his new, totally done-it-himself album. Usually I only focus on such things when it’s a local band, but what got me was his politely excited overuse of exclamation points (“Don’t hesitate to contact me if there’s anything else I can provide!”). Enthusiasm is always just grand, isn’t it, folks? No? Well, it’s better than when newbie bands tell me they’re trying to “garner reviews from great writers such as yourself.” I want to ask them, “‘Garner’, you say? Are you an awesome band, or are you literally trying to ‘raise my ire’?” But regardless, this is actually a decent album, sort of an advanced approach to ’80s radio-pop, starting with opener “Holding On” and — well, everything else. There’s a Hall & Oates/Aldo Nova side to this stuff that was believed extinct. At least by me, I mean. Oh, you get the picture. It’s great for what it is. A
Bedroom, Stray (self-released)
Droopy but basically palatable weird-beard-pop album from Noah Kittinger, who launched this project when he was 16. The main selling point is Kittinger’s voice, which touches on Grizzly Bear and whatever other Beach Boys-dipped Aughts-era album you might be able to stomach, but his go-to vocal sound is more akin to that of Junip’s José González (who I believe is much more renowned for guesting on Zero 7’s 2007 album The Garden, not that I’d ever fight someone over it), or, if you’re old, Gilbert O’Sullivan (of the 1972 mega-hit “Alone Again [Naturally]”). That’s a nice sourball sound, and it literally rescues something like half of these songs, which are glitch-chill with not enough glitch. I mean, it’s fine with me if an artist wants to interrupt songs with irritating demonstrations of beginner-level synth-edginess, but that stuff doesn’t increase its shelf-life, not when there are plenty of bands that go all-out with it and still remain melodic. May I be excused now? B-
PLAYLIST
A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases
• May 14 is the next general CD release day, and so I must depart the safety and people-shunning zen of my underground lair and venture out once again into the realm of new albums, in the hope of locating some music that isn’t refried, remixed, derivative, contrived or just plain awful. There are many hipsters afoot this week, so let’s first stop and try to gauge what Akron, Ohio-based garage band Black Keys are trying to accomplish with Delta Kream, their upcoming 10th album! Ah, it is a collection of “hill country blues” cover songs, which makes sense. I mean, if you were a skinny jeans-wearing, Reddit-browsing band from Ohio, really the only music you would be familiar with is music from America’s hill country, a region of northern Mississippi bordering Tennessee, am I right? No? Whatever, let’s just go with it; I’m seeing semi-famous names being bandied about here, such as R. L. Burnside’s guitarist Kenny Brown, as well as separate entries from Junior Kimbrough and his bassist Eric Deaton. What, you haven’t heard of them either? OK, that’s a win-win, let’s wrap this up quickly, then, but remember, old songs about mud and snakes and whatever are really cool, because — well, you know, because. There are covers of John Lee Hooker songs, including his version of “Crawling Kingsnake,” which is pretty awesome as far as throwback-chill-blues go. The video was filmed in front of Jimmy Duck Holmes’ Blue Front Café, which is the oldest active juke joint in America. You don’t care? Well that isn’t very awesome of you, but OK, moving on.
• Mind the rocky terrain, Rocinante’s Fail, my backside already hurts from this quest for decent music, and in fact if you’ll stop for some nice water and oats or whatever donkeys eat, I’ll investigate more hipsterism, from this new Chills album, Scatterbrain! These guys are a jangle-pop indie band from New Zealand, and they break up pretty often, which means they are good, because jangle-pop bands should break up as often as possible. What’s this then, the latest single is called “Destiny.” In a nutshell, it’s Belle & Sebastian but with whatsisname’s masculine, half-whispered voice. At least it’s analog, but then again, who could make sleepy Buddy Holly-sounding music with digital equipment, am I right? It would accidentally sound like Tiesto, I think, don’t you?
• I know I just recently talked about a Juliana Hatfield album in Retro Playlist, but she has a new one coming out soon, titled Blood. Yes, she is cool, because she was in The Lemonheads and she’s done records with Paul Westerberg, but let’s listen to the new single, “Mouthful Of Blood” and check in! Well wow, it is an OK song, jangly and mildly riot-grrrl-ish. No, she doesn’t actually sound very edgy, but if you like bands like Dinosaur Jr. or whatever, you’ll probably like this.
• Wrapping up the week is Seattle indie-schlub Damien Jurado’s new LP The Monster Who Hated Pennsylvania, led off by a single called “Helena!” This guy looks like an accountant and sings like one too; this is shuffle-y folkie chill, sort of like Sun Kil Moon but more awkward and accountant-y.
Retro Playlist
Exactly 10 years ago this space was focused on a bunch of new albums, including Give Till It’s Gone, which at the time was the new one from weird-beard-culture icon Ben Harper. Putting all snark aside, I tried to assure my readership that the album “was totally not rushed out to help pay Harper’s legal bills in his divorce from pointy-nosed David Lynch muppet Laura Dern,” because if I’d said it actually was rushed out in order to pay some L.A. lawyer, people would have started distrusting the entertainment industry, maybe even taken a long look at why anyone would buy a Ben Harper album in the first place (“The hard-rockin’ Neil Young-inspired kickoff single “Rock N Roll Is Free” highlights the Joey Ramone aspects of Harper’s voice, because you should always put your weakest foot forward.”).
But all was not baseless trolling of unfairly popular indie-folk-whatevers that week. The main thrust involved two albums, one of which was an emo thing, Yellowcard’s When You’re Through Thinking Say Yes. My review of that one was a random jumble of hatred for their usual freshly showered “power pop” (I really need to take a few minutes someday and just write a quick software program that writes reviews of emo albums, all of which would be variations on what I said about this one: “… there is, as always, little to say about this sort of album aside from ‘at least such-and-so is a good song’). My one-line closer was pretty good, though, if I say so myself: “Beach music for future stars of Teen Mom.”
There was also an arena-dinosaur band on tap, namely old Scottish butt-kickers Nazareth, with Big Dogz. I think this was the band’s last LP before singer Dan McCafferty died, and it was a valiant effort, if a bit too (predictably) bluesy, like the fellas were trying to recapture the non-magic of the muddy, truck-drivin’ bar-band nonsense of their (not awesome) older albums, the ones they made before (the totally awesome) Hair Of The Dog. Nevertheless, McCafferty did turn in a couple of badass rockouts (OK, actually one, “Lifeboat”), and in the end it’s a nice, messy, caterwauling effort.