review: Discover America - Future Paths

Discover America
Future Paths
Lujo Records, 2010

mp3: Discover America: "Force of Proper Wind"

A few years ago Iron and Wine was on the tip of all the tongues, now it's chillwave or whatever. So it goes for trends, for singer songwriters and singer songwriters from Seattle maybe as well.

Definitely want to lump Discover America (nee Chris Staples) into the Damian Jurado / David Bazan camp. Too many things are in common. There's that Seattle thing. There's that complicated relationship with Christian faith. There's that understated yet visceral acoustic-type output.

Staples seems more folk than both of those guys, though the opener "Force of Proper Wind" has the piano meandering on the edge of the more honest parts of say, Twothirtyeight's Regulate the Chemicals, a release from Staples' previous band. He reins it end in the following track--"1979"--a weary ballad of indie rock honesty if there ever was one.

Actually, the album begins to separate into two distinct parts--like oil and water. The salt-of-the-earth side is represented by songs like "1979," "Sawdust in My Clothes," the verses of "A Lock of Samson's Hair" and "Time Is A Bird."

The other songs have another edge, utilizing more mechanical means--drum machines, more delay--rock songs almost but more melodic than anything by Twothirtyeight. "Devil In The Woods" is my favorite of these, followed almost immediately by "When You Were Young" and "Out of the Valley" falls somewhere in between the two structures. Sometimes Staples has the jam band Death Cab for Cutie nailed, other times he is doing his best Florida to Seattle impression of the lonesome Southern road less traveled.

It's maddening--give me the programmed drum beats anyday--I want this enforced mechanical isolation to box Staples in--those times he is the most honest, the most complete songwriter and at his best. Forget any of the slightly alt-folk jingles and stick to the bitter, the inhumane, the computational. Sounds awful, I know, but it's Staples at his best.


More after the jump...

Deckfight's 2009 Recap

Bye, bye 2009, don't think it was too much of a disaster. But if you want to rubberneck some more we won't be back until 2010. In the meantime, here's some essential Deckfight reading from the past year:

Favorite Deckfight stories of 2009:

1) Mike Fretto of Rosa Loves & Leo McGovern of Antigravity Mag.
2) Corndogorama
3) Michael Jackson is a Thriller
4) John Wray
5) I Was Totally Destroying It
6) 5 Favorite Southern Novels
7) 5 Most Important Brand New Songs
8) Red Collar
9) 5 Favorite Indie Rock Songs for College Football
10) Duncan's 5 Favorite Albums from Merge Records


Favorite Deckfight Book Reviews

1) The Great Perhaps by Joe Meno
2) Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
3) Shake The Devil Off by Ethan Brown
4) Sunlight at Midnight, Darkness at Noon by Hosho McCreesh and Chris Cunningham
5) Arkansas by John Brandon

Favorite Deckfight Album Reviews

1) DD/MM/YYYY: Black Square
2) Jeff The Brotherhood: Heavy Days
3) Brand New: Daisy
4) Nathan Oliver: Cloud Animals
5) Midtown Dickens: Lanterns

And in case you forgot---

Favorite Albums of the Decade
Favorite Books of the Decade
Favorite Albums of 2009
Favorite Books Read in 2009

Technically, 2009 was not Deckfight's first year but it definitely was its most active. It's been on a regular basis since April of this year and we came over to this site in June. 2010 looks to be wonderful. I'm going to be changing some of the posting schedule and I've had some recent talks about a site redesign. Let's make this thing look sharp.

It's been an awesome learning experience with more ups than downs. A lot of stuff I didn't get to, and probably won't get to, as that is the blogging dilemma. But it's been great connecting with a lot of different people. And those people I'd like to thank:

Thanks to all the blogs in the Albums of The Decade Tour. Thanks to those 10 guys who had never heard really heard of Deckfight before and decided screw it, let's do it.

Thanks to all the random sites and blogs that have linked to us in the past year, but especially to Vol. 1 Brooklyn and The Lawn Chair Boys for being super supportive for no apparent reason.

Thanks to Dave at Largehearted Boy for randomly linking to my stuff and answering random emails from me even though he's an indie-blog superstar.

Thanks to Josh R. & Andrew J. for writing and contributing and my wife for being so kind to me in this extra-writing endeavor.

Thanks to you for reading.


More after the jump...

review: Holiday Shores---Columbus'd The Whim

Holiday Shores
Columbus'd The Whim
Two Syllable Records, 2009

Holiday Shores: "Phones Don't Feud"

Wanted to review the Holiday Shores album for a few reasons. #1 CMJ buzz. #2 The album's name is "Columbus'd The Whim." Nice verb action. #3 Tallahassee. #4 It's the holidays.

Columbus'd has some nautical feelings going on, as well as the word "Shores" so get ready for some laid-back sailor tales. But instead of hard-charging, hard-cussing metal, there's a lot of pseudo-Carribean playfulness punctuated with an Animal Collective high-pitched experimentation, which in the clash of buzz bands means: Vampire Weekend meets Animal Collective. For reals. Sickening, I know. The only prob with that is that Holiday Shores doesn't have either band's proclivity for melody or memorable experimentation, which means very few things stick. Maybe this is "lo-fi" too, and I'm a little conflicted about not only what that means, but what that sounds like in this digital age.

All that came out bad. Real bad.

Holiday Shores - Errand of Tongue from Yours Truly on Vimeo.

But then "Dens" makes me like this band, with its quiet distorted, hollowed creeping, and I like the "steel-ness" on "Phones Don't Feud." I like the round of "oh-oh-ohs" on"Errand of Tongue," which is like a lava lamp haphazardly place on a keyboard. "Bradley Bear" is that minimalist beach song that the hippies play for the tourists in Ft. Lauderdale and "I'll Spend Money I Don't Have" is experimental audio at its honest best, again the echo chamber, again the wandering keys. Founder and key member Nathan Pemberton is like any promising musician--thinking, wondering, wishing, creating.

Another winner--"Edge of Our Lives." This is a key track, it has some funky breakdowns in it, adheres to a tighter structure, maximizes its keyboard parts, has the requisite hip fuzziness, encapsulates all of Holiday Shores' unique sounds, but packages it in concisely. I like this song a lot. "Experiencer" is another like that, as the chorus intones "I don't know things I don't know..." and on and on and on, with Pemberton's warble and newly fashioned surf rock, it holds together well, is "experimental" without too many key changes and ups and downs to be typically deemed as "experimental." This isn't of course Animal Collective or Vampire Weekend, but Holiday Shores--an entity in their own right.

All that came out well. Real well.
More after the jump...

review: The Beached Margin/Done Waiting by I Was Totally Destroying It

Let's go ahead and make it clear that you'll be hearing a lot about I Was Totally Destroying It in the next few months (if you haven't already). Their album of two EPs, The Beached Margin/Done Waiting, was released in August and their new one, Horror Vacui drops in mid-October. Never gave this one a proper review, so here we go...



The Beached Margin/Done Waiting EPs
I Was Totally Destroying It
Greyday Records, 2009

I Was Totally Destroying It: "The Witch Riding Your Back"

It's kind of odd that Chapel Hill's I Was Totally Destroying It (IWTDI) crammed The Beached Margin and Done Waiting together. Stylistically, the four songs of The Beached Margin is this atypical sandwich of the most melancholic songs the band has ever written. Thick with folktale metaphor, the EP glances at witches, wolves, and wolves blowing down houses. It's the air of frustration, where everything is a fog that can't be beaten, only escaped.

Though "The Witch Riding Your Back" is upbeat, there's a definite purpose to it--a force that lets you know that this going somewhere. Lead vocalists Rachel Hirsh and John Booker have resignation in their voice as they sing about a "hag of intimdation" and about the witch that they've never seen riding their backs and suffocating them. It's a lot different than the wistfulness for simpler days in songs like "My Favorite Haunt" or the breakdanceable "Hey Alright!"

"Fences," "Negative Agents" and "Me + All My Friends" discuss more about weaknesses, houses falling, dead friends and frantic movement with no forward progress. It does show maturity, I guess, a maturity that everything isn't always sweet tea and roses. But their jaded natureseems to come a little too easy, just like their jangly, awesome melodies of their self-titled debut invoke jealousy at their ease as well. It's obvious that lyricists Booker and Hirsh wear their hearts on their sleeves, luckily they have plenty of interesting melodies beating forth.




With the almost despairing songs of The Beached Margin, it's a relief to hear a mildly excitable song like "Done Waiting" on the 7 song EP of the same name. It delivers an awesome opening guitar melody and then the percussion and bass fill in nicely behind Hirsh's vocals. Like I said, these guys have POP oozing out of them and they can't help but be contagious.

But "Teeth" is more cautiously optimistic, "Get In Line" is a patient explanation of a bad relationship with yet an easy hook to pick up. Guess all I mean is that IWTDI is not so easily classifiable any more, this set of songs delivers on the awkwardness of telling others off, on sinful people, on the impossibility not remaining perfect.

But all this is only gleaned from the lyrics--because outside looking in, IWTDI throws a couple of curveballs, but overall maintains their snappy spunk. "The Masquerade" is a melancholy number that ends too abruptly and "Radar Song" seems like a great song, just probably not for this band with its hollowed confessional feel. I'm just glad they got all of this out of their system before Horror Vacui. Maybe for that one we'll see a more balanced account.

I've read a lot of different comparisons for this band, but I always come back to the Foo Fighters and Jimmy Eat World with female flourishes. This is modern rock to its core, nothing offensively hard here--just straight catchy, guitar rock with its most potent pop formula.

The Beached Margin/Done Waiting doesn't lend itself to the many crowd pleasers of the self-titled, but its obviously not supposed to. There are some deeper machinations at work here and IWTDI in all of their prodigousness decided to share a bit of their frustrations with us instead of hiding these tapes in the deep, dark basement. But what's dark for IWTDI is just a little downer for the rest of us. They can't help but express themselves but except with a love for the upbeat.

More after the jump...

review: Con Law Generationals

Generationals
Con Law
Park The Van Records, 2009

Generationals: "When They Fight, They Fight"
Generationals: "Wildlife Sculpture"

No doubt that New Orleans has a rich musical tradition, unfortunately that tradition has rarely included good rock music. There are a lot of of awesome musicians in NOLA, but that rarely has translated into actual bands, rock bands that is. In fact it's kind of alarming to visit the Generationals MySpace page and have the words NEW ORLEANS rather than BROOKLYN or PORTLAND or SEATTLE scream out at you. But all that's alright, because this isn't NEW ORLEANS music really, not much bounce, nothing real jazzy, no CASH MONEY.

Ted Joyner and Grant Widner, the originators of Generationals, are formerly of the Baton Rouge -based The Eames Era. They are beneficiaries of fortuitous timing, running into Park The Van close to the same time that the once displaced label made their return to New Orleans. This is Park The Van's first New Orleans artist. And their faith is well-founded because Generationals have made a wonderful record. There is a vintage quality to Con Law, something like 60s pop, classy grooves, soul and triumphant horn solos with the crackle of modern indie rock say-speak and some tasteful beats.



My first inclination was to liken them to Spoon (modern rock horns!), Talking Heads (soft new wave!) and Vampire Weekend (whimsical dance-pop!). I guess that's right, but I still feel like something is missing with those comparisons, namely a vintage sensibility with arrangements and melody.

Their own underdog hit "When They Fight, They Fight" sounds a lot different than some other tracks on the record, but it possesses an unshakeable soulful groove, snappy percussion, the "I love you baby" chorus...I really think The Drifters and Same Cooke would be proud. Generationals has that irresistible but infectious indifference to SERIOUS indie rock. Whatever the heck that means. So there's a freedom to clap, to dance, to shake a hip, to find a GROOVE and GET IT ON.



That hit is followed by the great "Our Time 2 Shine" which I overlooked for its breeziness after many repeats of "When They Fight, They Fight." But now I'm convinced the alternating vocals and it's descriptions of going out on the town make this song just as swell. Very swell, indeed. The perfect song for relaxing AFTER the groove has been gotten. More great horn parts, nice alternating vocals, very laid-back, enough to make any 60's R&B hit-making factory jealous.

With these two songs in particular, there is a less is more quality--each sound, instrument, each beat seems planned for maximum impact. Their timing and rhythm here is impeccable and it carries to "Wildlife Sculpture," "Bobby Beale" and "Exterior Street Day" in particular.

With a fully rounded out lineup, Generationals are planning to hit the road hard. And they have an incredible sound to sell. If anyone is still missing a soundtrack to the summer, listen to Generationals now.
More after the jump...

review: Nathan Oliver--Cloud Animals

Nathan Oliver
Cloud Animals
Pox World Empire, 2009

Nathan Oliver: "French Press"

Cloud Animals is a mix of folk, modern rock, and synth goodness to make a diverse palette of selections. There are some uneven parts here, many of the songs don't really resemble the one that came before it. But they make a whole. A great whole.

The opener carnivalesque "Icicles for Fingers" has this fanciful plucky swing vibe, the bass line keeps its strong and the vocals from Nathan White maintain an edge of playfulness and sarcastic danger. Really, it's an interesting track to include in the context of the rest of the album--it's crazy device is never repeated nor really even hinted at. And, well, it's chilling. But the rest of the album has thrills, spills and melancholia to settle everyone down.


Because the second track "Under Lock and Key" launches into driving modern rock before ceding to more typical lighthearted folk in "French Press" complete with a high-strung chorus and high-key guitar chords. Nathan Oliver tries on different skins with these songs, moving around a bit to find the best fit. Maybe part of it is that the band lineup changes and essentially revolves around Nathan White. He's got varied tastes and is trying them all out.

Further dalliances include my two favorite tracks: "Playground Lies" and "Red Panda." Deeper grooves with some electric flourishes dashed over them. "Playground Lies" has this wide open bridge and chorus, grandiose in its scale and scope with this heartland naivete, before moving into brooders in "A Dark History" and "Alone in a Fog," taking their own garage rock/shoegaze acoustic plunge. But with all these, there does seems to be some folk-sian narrative, nothing here is churned out completely as a single of the week.

All of that is almost thrown out the window, with "Red Panda" though. It's got this fluid danceable breakdown, that if the song were in isolation, would make indie-rock crushes like The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Vivian Girls blush. But really, it's only one song, the most frustrating, the most appealing, the most out of left-field that just proves that Cloud Animals really is a carnival.

I have no doubt that Nathan Oliver could throw a bunch of those dance hits together, stack up the indie accolades and then take a bow. But it's only one skin, and Nathan Oliver is still moving through them, like a confused chameleon who happens to look good at whatever is tried on.

But it's okay, Nathan Oliver. We're all willing to wait and grow and laugh and find out with you. Keep doing your thing. We've got all of Cloud Animals to keep us company.

For more Nathan Oliver, check out our list of 5 More North Carolina Bands You Should Hear Now.

More after the jump...

review: Magik Markers' Balf Quarry

The opening track of Balf Quarry (Drag City), duo Magik Markers' latest album, is titled “Risperdal,” which I discovered is the name of a medication used to treat bipolar disorder, and it's an apt name considering that the song sounds a lot like Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon fronting Pavement as they record to a four track cassette. Elisa Ambrosio's unhurried and bored-as-hell vocals about deceit and betrayal play nicely with her distorted guitar riff as the song chugs along on Peter Nolan's subdued garage rock 4-4 drums. All told, it's a strong opening song, as it sounds familiar enough to pull you in and fresh enough to keep you interested. “Risperdal” is not the highlight of the album, though. This distinction belongs to the second track, “Don't Talk in Your Sleep.” Ambrosio starts the song with a mud thick guitar riff that picks up force when Nolan comes in, playing a hi-hat heavy '70s funk beat that gets your head moving. The song, as an instrumental, would be appropriate background for a Charles Bronson movie, but you wouldn't want to miss Ambrosio's singing, which is some of her best work on the album. Again, the theme is betrayal, and Ambrosio is all business as she warns her lover, “Don't talk in your sleep / Don't leave a trace / 'cause a loving woman can have the Devil's face.” It's a dark and sinister track and among the most carefully constructed songs on Balf Quarry.

Magik Markers have long been known as noise rockers, and they have released dozens of cdr albums where they generally did not stick to the rules of popular music as much as they tend to on Balf Quarry. However, the three tracks following “Don't Talk in Your Sleep” come crashing through one after the other to provide the listener with a hearty reminder that Magik Markers can still make a lot of noise, and shouldn't be pigeonholed as part of any single musical genre. From sounding like 1980s hardcore punk (“Jerks”) to the musical act at a circus for the insane (“Psychosomatic”) to The Beach Boys infiltrated by drugged up gypsies (“7/23'), Magik Markers seem capable and willing to dip their toes in all manner of musical stylings. Thus, when the duo finally collapses into a full on noise number (“The Ricercar of Dr. Clara Haber”) with frantic drums and ear splitting guitar squeals, one is not surprised.

The second half of Balf Quarry is not as strong as its first, but there are still some good songs. “The Lighter Side of...Hippies” is yet another full-on punk rock endeavor for Ambrosio and Nolan, this one taunting the '60s generation, and is interestingly followed by “Ohio R./Live/Hoosier,” a song that sounds influenced by psychedelia. The final song, “Shells,” runs for almost eleven minutes, with haunting cellos and ghostly singing, and seems a fitting close to such a varied and dark album.

Magik Markers' last album, Boss, was produced by Lee Ranaldo whose band, Sonic Youth, toured with Magik Markers in 2004. Certainly, the elder band's stamp is on much of Ambosio and Nolan's work, as it is on so many other popular bands today, but Balf Quarry is, nevertheless, a daring and solid effort. For those who have taken a shine to noise inspired bands like No Age and Liars, I recommend giving Balf Quarry a listen. You won't be disappointed.

More after the jump...