Bonus Reviews
Blood Red Shoes
Get Tragic
(JAZZ LIFE)
Pressing shuffle and landing on Blood Red Shoes is equivalent to taking a shot of whiskey. You may think that you didn’t need it, but turns out you did. Steven Ansel’s drums bang out heavy rhythms, Laura Mary-Carter’s guitar cleaves, and both members sing. New album Get Tragic (coming after a five-year gap) is royal. It was made on the coattails of an exhaustive collapse caused by four LPs and relentless touring over six years. Before Get Tragic, the UK duo broke up—Mary-Carter moved to Los Angeles, trying to pitch songs to Rihanna; Ansel said that he did drugs for half-a-year. Mary-Carter had these thoughts: “Small hits of validation and the feeling of having all eyes on you have become our generation’s biggest drug problem.”
Blood Red Shoes had to reinvent itself (Mary-Carter started playing around with keyboards following a broken arm); luckily, some ripping guitar solos remain for the band. When a rock group looks to electronics and dance moves, it could turn out bad (ask Muse), but it worked out for Blood Red Shoes. If the 49-second album interlude spikes interest, imagine what the other 10 tracks provide? Blood Red Shoes’ new laser life is murky and flirtatious in succession. Get Tragic hammers with smooth menace on “Nearer” (feat. The Wytches),” chugs alongside a bongo drum (“Mexican Dress”), and on “Anxiety” throws Jack White guitar work at us for good measure.
If you’ll allow it, fall into Ansel’s banging rack tom, get possessed by Mary-Carter’s dark guitar, or try to figure which member is going to sing first. It’s Blood Red Shoes’ musical world and it’ll grab you. (www.bloodredshoes.co.uk)
By Jordan J. Michael
boygenius
boygenius EP
(MATADOR)
The “breakup album” is often considered a uniquely individual expression of grief or triumph. Generally, the details of an individual’s romantic life have enough broad associations to the particulars of another’s and we, as listeners, are able to empathize with the album in an inductive way, tracing out trends from the intimately documented debris of a former romance. This process of identification is inverted on Phoebe Bridges’, Lucy Dacus’, and Julien Baker’s debut EP as boygenius. Instead of zooming out from the particulars, we are presented with the general truths of our romances from which we may string together our own private experiences.
That isn’t to suggest that the EP is a demanding listen that requires effort on the part of the listener. The folk-rock harmonies weave seamlessly through the mist of spindly guitars and echoey ambience and the democratically allocated lead duties almost always blur back into a collective voice. The lessons the EP documents are not always the most palatable, but the delivery is always as familiar as the wind, whether combing through fields or uprooting a mighty oak. This familiarity, in part, owes itself to the consistent clarity of vision maintained throughout the album as Bridges, Dacus, and Baker document shared trials with weary exasperation.
In one of the most cathartic moments on the album, the track “Me & My Dog” uses the imagery of the simplicity and unquestioning devotion of a love with a pet to express the yearning for a love that comes without judgment and rests on a deeply rooted foundation of mutual acceptance. As the song builds and the acoustic gives way to electric, the lyrics become more unqualified and Bridges’ vocals blend with the group’s as they express an impossible desire. Through communion they find belonging in isolation.(store.matadorrecords.com/boygenius)
By Stephen Axeman
Broods
Don’t Feed the Pop Monster
(NEON GOLD/ATLANTIC)
Left to their own devices, Kiwi siblings Georgia and Caleb Nott, seize the chance to play; breaking free from the carefully constructed monotone of dark-wave for a kaleidoscopic third album. First single “Peach” is zany and euphoric pop that veers happily into different sonic territories, showcasing the duo’s gift for infectious upbeat melodies without forsaking broody temperaments. “Why Do You Believe In Me?” hews close to strengths—harmonies, electronics, and lyrics that belie insecurities. They’ve found new textures and colors to deliver darker impulses: in the form of a ’90s groove (“Old Dog”), the rambunctious, bass-led “Hospitalized,” or old timey ballad (“Life After”), with admirable results.(www.broodsmusic.com)
By Celine Teo-Blockey
Buke and Gase
Scholar
(BRASSLAND)
Discovered by The National’s Bryce Dessner and regular Shellac support band of choice (there’s even been a live collaboration with basist Bob Weston), this Brooklyn duo broke through somewhat with 2013’s excellent General Dome and have taken their sweet time preparing their third full-length album.
Scholar is a deeply unusual record. It refuses to go where you want, or expect, and this can confound, frustrate, even, but you’re compelled to go with Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez, so tantalizing do they make this path less travelled.
The jerking funk-folk of “Pink Boots” throws back to General Dome’s stunning opener “Houdini Crush,” and here Dyer is taking a strong feminist stance with lyrics like “Behind the kitchen utensils/You’re still servicing” while later in the same song we recall Kathleen Hanna’s Le Tigre and their pronounced, synthesized thrust.
Scholars has a far deeper field of vision than its predecessors—the slinky, sensual “Derby” is, conversely, arranged roughly, brutishly but in a way that sounds fresh rather than alienates. This constant shifting, movement, and divergence is emblematic of the album. When they lean into the possibility of “pop” as on “Wrong Side,” with its simple beat and repeated, memorable vocal—“A wide range of ways to be/That’s just right for me/ That’s just right for my body”—they defy once again with algebraic construction, and like several of the songs here it phases not only from one mood to another but into whole other genres and sets of instrumentation.
You can imagine they could toss out a top 10 hit with some ease—yet, admirably, choose to remain adventurous, bold, and hard-edged.
That’s not to say that Dyer’s increasingly confident and expressive vocals aren’t beautiful, pleasing, and sometimes spectacular—yet she chooses to mutate melody, molding it into ever more contorted and surprising shapes.
The brief, angular instrumental interludes provide little respite—both “Qi Ball” and closer “Ranger” are menacing, their incompleteness something of a nerve-shredder.
The “easiest,” smoothest song here comes late on with “Flock”—but even here no quarter is given: “I wanna play in muddy water/And find myself dirty again” cries Dyer, compromise seemingly not in their repertoire.
While the namesake buke and gase instruments they have relied on in the past do crop up here of course, this is an album that moves beyond any expectation you may have for this band and into an entirely more textured, unexpected realm. It has a sense of purpose and intent that only seems to be emphasized by its artful presentation.(www.bukeandgase.com)
By Michael James Hall
Chain Wallet
No Ritual
(JANSEN)
Mixing New Wave style anthemic pop hooks with jangly chorused guitars and New Age lyrics, the Norwegian dream pop group Chain Wallet strive for profundity amidst the dizzying headrush of ’80s nostalgia. The sections in the songs are tight and the gated reverb snare is equalized perfectly, but after the first time hearing the surging, oceanic drums bob under the slick sheen of a by now grossly overused guitar effect you begin to feel that some heart is missing from these tracks and that it is yet another instance of fetishization of the recent past. (www.chainwallet.bandcamp.com)
By Stephen Axeman
Michael Chapman
True North
(PARADISE OF BACHELORS)
To hear Michael Chapman for the very first time can be a confounding experience. The British progressive-folk statesman’s music is hypnotic, elaborate, sentimental; any cushy description feels facile, pointless—Chapman’s 40-plus album discography consists of enchanting guitar craftsmanship that’s too dense to be considered American Primitive, too complex to be folk, too rustic to come close to jazz. Instead, Chapman picks and pulls from the aforementioned styles of choice and creates a mixture that results in pungent, earthy progressive folk music that’s erudite and literary in its nature without sounding overly cultivated or stuffy—his music breathes and flows, winding witticisms and meandering, open-tuned voyages into the primitive-acoustic ether.
Chapman’s latest studio album, , produced by contemporary guitar guru Steve Gunn, is his bleakest effort to date, a sparse reflection as much as a blatant attribute; Chapman is no longer the young-gun folkie he made his name for in the early ’70s. He’s a weathered veteran of the written word and melodic guitar frameworks. isn’t so much his masterpiece as it is a quintessential journey into one of recorded music’s finest storytellers. (
