Print Edition: July 4, 2012
Beachwood Sparks
The Tarnished Gold
Appearing for a brief, two-album run circa 2000 before disappearing into the ether, Los Angeles space country outfit Beachwood Sparks have returned with their first album in 10 years. The Tarnished Gold finds the band comfortably tilling familiar territory: post-‘70s Americana interpreted through a breezy, psychedelic filter. As always, effortless harmonies abound. While the shadow of Gram Parsons looms large over most alternative country, the gently lilting vocal phasers, ever-present slide guitar and occasional synth pad set Beachwood Sparks apart for their emphasis on the “cosmic” element of Parsons’ own cognomen for the genre he helped invent: “cosmic American music.” Here, the band’s stoner country ethos serves to both enchant and frustrate in seemingly equal measure. While album opener “Forget the Song” finds the band in top form, expertly fusing a meandering, lightly strummed verse with a cut time chorus that provides the song with a natural and compelling variance in pace, “Mollusk” feels like a Jerry Garcia cast off that revels in cringe-inducing bounciness. The Tarnished Gold is doggedly pleasant, blissfully inconsequential, even, in a way that seems to defy scrutiny. But under its shimmering veneer, there are some glaring flaws that distractingly interrupt the album’s long, strange trip.
Ty Segall Band
Slaughterhouse
Slaughterhouse comes just a few months after Hair, Ty Segall’s collaboration with White Fence, marking his seventh studio release in four years. The ever-prolific Ty Segall is constantly writing and touring, which is atypical in an age where three or four years between albums is considered the norm for most artists. Fortunately, the limited time left between touring and recording works well for Segall, as his surging sauna of garage rock atmosphere and touring band’s energy are well documented in Slaughterhouse. These speedy turnarounds also speak volumes of the quick progression of Segall as a songwriter, who relentlessly cranks out records at breakneck speeds. His spirit is indisputable; his riffs are filthy, and just when the listener begins to question Segall’s atonal wall of sound, which can at times verge on monotonous, he always breaks through with breezy vocal harmonies and surf rock guitar lines. This retro, garage rock sound has really been making a comeback as of late, due to the success of bands like The Men, Japandroids and Yuck, but these bands aren’t simply tapping into a niche market which feeds on escapism or Stooges’ tribute bands, because their music inspires fresh unapologetic vigour and is too visceral to allow for such allegations.
Clams Casino
Instrumentals 2
Clams Casino’s Instrumentals 2 continues the method of its predecessor in stripping hip-hop producer Mike Volpe’s tracks of their raps and rhymes, leaving looped, entrancing, hypnotizing beats floating like torn fabric. Most recognized for the sounds he’s sent Lil B and A$AP Rocky’s way, the only words here are slurred or cut up – the focus is on the channels of layered composition, sent to the forefront by the missing vocals, a language of rhyming patterns and timed surges. Your familiarity with the tracks these originally served as the underpinnings for will determine how they sound—variations to be compared or originals to startle anew—but the back half of this second instrumental mix is where most of the surprises come. “Kissing On My Syrup” sounds like the kind of track you could weave and cut to on a WipEout course – percussion layered, electronic and wooden, that travels and echoes like a futuristic machine, while “Unchain Me” brings together the sounds floating over a cathedral’s walls with precisely snaking vocals and beats: amid all the building rattling, ear wax sticking bass and repetition, it gives the impression of a religious rendition of a secular hymn.
Chris Cagle
Back in the Saddle
Hailing from Texas, Chris Cagle has got true country twang. However, his newest album Back in the Saddle, kicking off with “Got My Country On,” only reinforces the redneck stereotype country music has established over its existence. The album’s second track, “I’ll Grow My Own,” is a little deeper, shooting back at our technologically-advancing society: “I’ll grow my own/ Yeah all I need is G-O-D to bless the seeds I’ve sown/ And pray for a little rain/ Yeah my daddy was the same/ He showed me as a kid/ How to live and let live/ You think you know what’s good for us you don’t.” Unfortunately, this track is the only redeeming aspect of this album, as the following songs revert to being stereotypical country songs about drinking away your problems, such as in “Thank God She Left the Whisky.” Cagle has hit the top charts before with singles like “Chicks Dig It,” but this new album lacks the ingenuity of the ones preceding it. Overall it is a good listen if you are in the mood for grabbing a drink yourself and crying along with the depressing songs.
