Print Edition: January 30, 2013
Foxygen
We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic
A slew of bands have recently dipped their toes into 1960s psychedelic music, but few have accomplished what Foxygen accomplish with their second full-length album Ambassadors. Rock duo Sam France and Jonathan Rado somehow find the perfect fusion of the genre’s sound with Foxygen’s esoteric identity and brazen sensibilities. Despite its trippy freak-outs, psychedelic music is at its best when it is built upon a simple pop foundation. Recording the album with Shins musician and gifted producer Richard Swift only helps bare musical fruit rooted in the past, with Swift demonstrating a meticulous ear for aesthetic 1960s elements while still producing a modern sound. The best cut on the album is “San Francisco,” which is a cheerful lament about longing for home, and digs into the past, echoing the early work of The Kinks. Its call-and-response chorus remembers how “I left my love in San Francisco/ That’s okay, I was born in L.A.” with light, British-esque inflections, similar to Colin Blunstone of The Zombies. With a nod and a wink at every turn, Ambassadors acts like a well-researched and cited final paper, with material that is clearly their own while still making some notable callbacks to their musical influences.
Yo La Tengo
Fade
When lead singer Ira Kaplan croons, “Nothing stays the same” on “Ohm,” he’s certainly not referring to his three-decade-old band. Unlike their self-destructive peers of the 1990s like Grandaddy, Sonic Youth and even Guided by Voices, Yo La Tengo has remained satisfied with their trio of members. Playing together since the mid-‘80s and now sitting atop the height of their fame, Yo La Tengo has released its 13th studio album Fade, while the aforementioned bands have either disbanded or gone through recent reunion tours to relive their glory years. Fade is a tight and disciplined record, with 10 songs coming in at around 45 minutes; it’s the band’s shortest since Fakebook and their best since the subdued masterpiece Summer Sun. The understated shifts in instrumentation, production and shortened songs throughout keeps Fade’s sunshine and lethargic attitude intact, while avoiding lulling the listener to sleep. This, combined with Ira’s signature hushed, almost whispered vocals, means that Fade should be, at least on paper, a soothing, but fun Yo La Tengo record. Yet there is a more restless feel to this record, and Fade is as delicate, sincere and poignant as anything the trio has ever committed to tape.
Daniel Romano
Come Cry With Me
Daniel Romano, formerly of punk outfit Attack in Black, has traded in his distortion pedal for a slide guitar and a shot of whiskey, refashioning himself as a country crooner over the course of his three solo records. His latest, Come Cry with Me, is an unabashedly slow, plodding, and sorrowful record drenched in slide guitar, fiddle, and Telecaster twang. The Welland, Ont.-native takes his cues from classic country acts like George Jones and Merle Haggard with nasally vocals reminiscent of the cosmic cowboy himself, Gram Parsons. Romano’s immersion in the genre is a bit of a double-edged sword. While his approach isn’t all that different than Parsons’, it also isn’t as novel or possessed of the same weird, crazed urgency that gives his predecessors’ work its desperate pathos. With Come Cry With Me, Romano also risks losing any particularly distinguishing feature of his own artistic identity, changing his delivery, song-writing and arrangements to the extent that they aren’t really recognizable as his own. Romano is at his best in the sparse, lo-fi, finger-picked album closer “A New Love (Can Be Found),” a live performance of a crying in your beer lament with sparse, finger-picked acoustic guitar, and a beautiful vocal harmony that pulls it all together with a memorable hook and meandering melody.
Twenty | One | Pilots
Vessel
Two albums already in, this is Twenty | One | Pilots’ first under a signed label. Also new to this release is Greg Wells who produced and has his hands all over it. Crazy hooks are invasive from start to finish, crossing genres from alt-pop to rap, and even house, this is a rocking, never boring, listen. Changing things up, there’s even a little bit of piano and folk. The band, a duo with Tyler Joseph on vocals and Josh Dun on the drums, has some crazy talent. Joseph’s voice is unique, sharp and tight. Although, there’s still the feeling that they have a carefree flare and want to experiment. But there exists a conflict. The problem is that by the end it does begin to feel like you ate a little too much sugar as at certain times it becomes too easy to detect a mainstream marketing appeal. Fortunately, while it lacks particular substance on some tracks, even in the lyrical attempts to be relevant to serious issues, I would love to see this band in concert or listen to it in my car. Certain standout songs include a take on hurt in “Guns For Hands,” as well as “Trees” which is a slow building, emotively manifested, house track.
