Non-Prog Album Reviews

by Chicago Underground Duo

10 tracks, 55 mins

 

 

This is almost certainly the most puzzling review I've ever written. I've reviewed "difficult" music before- f**k Buttons spring to mind- but I've always been able to say whether I like or recommend it even if I couldn't quite capture the sound in words. With Chicago Underground Duo's latest, I'm really grasping at shadows putting things on paper- Frank Zappa's great quote "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" has never been more applicable for me.

Drummer Chad Taylor plays in Iron And Wine but the last thing you should do is let that be a reference. Nothing of Sam Beam's influence is to be found here.

The cover gives a clue- it's not clear what the point is, the band are obscured, you can't quite tell what effect they're going for, at first I didn't even notice the title/name was written on it, appeared to be one of those pure image covers. This kind of throwing-off the audience is par for the course on Boca Negra.

Imagine if Autechre tried recording with live instruments. Though CUD are rooted in jazz, on this record there's a lot of tracks that seem to depart entirely from it, even in a free/experimental jazz sense. Perhaps we have found the genre of post-jazz? I hesitate to call it prog/fusion because while it's BIZARRE at times which rings up the prog-ometer there's very little rock/fusion feel to it. This is not technical. Dizzying solos aren't there. Nor is it freeform improvising. Nor is it ambient. Sometimes rhythm/melody seem to be entirely absent though music is being played.

With a track like Left Hand Of Darkness, I'm really not sure what the duet of cornetist and drummer are doing. Alien clanging and whiney noises titter along for a few moments with the odd sudden shift in pitch or volume or pattern. They do this very slowly and carefully too- it doesn't feel at all haphazard but as though it has been very painstakingly put together. The track, like a few of the quiet ones, keeps feeling like it is going to collapse into silence altogether though there's always another subtlely unexpected noise about to burble up and have you striving to find the connections. And just when you think this is going to end up a successor to Metal Machine Music, something that feels a bit like a groove/song kicks up two minutes in, as the marimba finds a line and the cornet slots into place over it, but if you don't sit down and concentratedly listen to the music, the contrast between desperate reaching for sound and then the relief of identifiable elements, which I think is the intention, is lost. But at the same time, sitting down and giving all of your mind to just these four minutes is quite draining and at no point particularly fun. By the time you get to the truely obscure Roots And Shooting Stars near the record's end, where electronic whispers and cornet that alternately drones and sqawks eventually metls into barely audible marimba twinkling (but you can't quite relax because by this point you're sure something baffling is just around the corner) one feels quite exhausted despite not having moved at any time.

However, the entire record is not this obtuse. Green Ants and a cover of Coleman's Broken Shadows are on offer, though both seem to raise the question "What is jazz and what is two guys fooling around on their instruments?" There are moments when they find great grooves and trills and moments when it feels as if I had put two eighth graders in an instrument storage room, said "Whatever" and then hit record.

Yet just to make this a real record that is everything yet not quite anything, there is an accessible patch in the middle, from the 5th to 7th tracks. Confliction begins in an obstreperous fashion with someone slowly beating a piano as though they're trying to piss people off while cornetist Mazurek occasionally pipes up as if he's in the next room and doesn't know the mic is picking him up. So of course this being this record, after two minutes of that, they go straight into an enjoyable Dave Brubeck type jam. Quite why it had to be preceded by the piano equivalent of water torture I couldn't say but sixth track Hermeto makes up for some of the awkwardness by giving us a lush, beautiful piece of atmospherics where marimba and what I think is a thumb piano mix with wind sounds to soothe us after all the mental hopping we've been doing. And seventh track Spy On The Floor is actually groovy and after the drums come in after a short, quiet, but logical intro has no surprises up its sleeve and works as evidence that these guys can really play when the fancy takes them.

All in all, this not a record I like or dislike. Maybe my musical IQ isn't high enough or I haven't listened to enough experimental jazz to get this but I can neither praise it highly as I didn't really enjoy myself but nor can I pan it as Despair type trash because I can feel a definite creative, intelligent talent in the framework, even if it's not speaking a language I understand. But please, feel free to give it a try if you're adventurous- maybe you can find the words to evaluate it that continue to elude me.

 

2.5/5

 

Boxer

by The National

12 tracks, 43 mins

 

I went down to the shops and grabbed new The National album High Violet. But before listening to it, I decided to revisit their previous two albums, both of which I consider excellent, Alligator and Boxer. Alligator is excellent and I may review it also soon but something happened with Boxer which shows how much I like it- I realised how much I love this album and am listening to it instead of trying the new one. High Violet will have its work cut out dethroning this, but The National may just have what it takes to do that.

And like a lot of the best albums, this is grower. In fact it's a grower's grower. In fact I'm still noticing new things about it, like how good Bryan Devendorf's drumming is- check him out on Brainy. But he plays that excellently without being the least bit flashy or overbearing about it. Like everything else about the band, it is subtle and understated and requires attention and time to be noticed. This is a band of real songcraft.

I was also shocked after first encountering them back in 2005 to find that they are American- there is an extremely English vibe to them, with Matthew Berninger's tranquilised undertaker voice and depressive wit and the music's reminiscence of Joy Division giving pop rock a go. The song seem to be what Leonard Cohen might produce if he tried to go commercial though as you can imagine it's still not that commercial. Still, there are tracks with a warm glow and choruses which at first pass seem indistinguishable from the verses till you begin to feel the little swells and variations The National tuck into their tunes.

 

 

Most of the album goes for a more somber, twilight feeling, the kind of thing you might listen to on a lonely bus going home late with a distant lit city skyline out the window. As well as more alt-pop-rock (Mistaken For Strangers is particularly strong with a great dumline and the most high-impact chorus of the album) the album drifts seamlessly into more unexpected territories such as the extremely sinister acoustic pub-folk inflected Green Gloves, probably my favourite song on the album. There's also the droning horns of Racing Like A Pro. What could be awkward experiments are saved by Berninger's expert vocals. His delivery and phrasing and choice of words are just right- he seems to deadpan and convey a lot of emotion at the same time, the love child of Tom Waits and Morrissey (lyrically, not vocally, though Waits' dunken aura can be felt here.)

Listen to the atmosphere his delivery creates on Brainy. It's like Interpol with good songs.

 

 

From opener Fake Empire's playing of two tempos at once to closer Gospel which moves about as much as music so quiet and undynamic could- The National create mental pyrotechnics without sonic ones- this is a deeply rich album and just about perfect. After three years, I'm not bored in the slightest. Excellently written songs performed excellently. I don't just like every track, I LOVE every track. There are no weak moments. Those who demand explosions and dramatic events may be deeply uninterested at first but I've seen this album persist and punch through to people who at first thought it wasn't for them. I can't recommend it enough and I hope that you can look past this embarrassingly gushing love letter to give it a try :)

 

5/5

 

 

 

Expressing an opinion is not treading on anybody's hallowed ground , so why would I object to that?  I am responding to saying "takes more than a great voice", calling him overrated and now that he's a Heath/Cobain case.  Jeff has way more facility as a singer than Bellamy or Yorke, especially in oscillating smoothly between falsetto, mixed and head voice.  He also used to play guitar while singing live and had great facility on guitar too, for your info.  I don't think most serious fan overrate him because he had a great voice or died early, actually I didn't know he was dead the first time I heard Grace and I had already been swept away.  And while Grace is not hard rocking in the Muse sense, moments of it like in Mojo Pin, the title track or Forget Her are a lot more intense than any Muse.   It is quite amusing to hear Jeff get called overrated because so few even seem to perceive the full extent of his vocal wizardry or his unorthodox adventurism as a songwriter.