Canadian Audiophile’s Mishaps and Misadventures

Filled with contagious grooves and bouncy piano, Jukebox the Ghost’s Let Live and Let Ghosts is a sparkling 60s pop revival sort of record. The DC-born, Philly-based three-piece is skilled at conducting themselves with relentless glee, adding triple harmonies to songs and bounding around like a bunch of crazed preschoolers with immense musical talent and endless optimism.

Let Live and Let Ghosts sounds like a sort of amped-up Ben Folds record, with bouncier piano and more liberal doses of electric jubilation. Serving as an excellent introduction to an incredibly fun new group, this debut rekindles the joy of sing-along pop without sounding dorky or forced.

Pushing straight through the geek rock of bands like Weezer and into a more delicate sense of composition, Jukebox the Ghost is here to stay.

Featuring Ben Thornewill on piano/vocals, Tommy Siegel on guitar/vocals, and Jesse Kristin on drums/vocals, the setup for Jukebox the Ghost is humble and pleasant. Thornewill’s classical piano training is evident from the get-go, spicing up songs like the enchanting “Victoria” with tantalizing notes and scales.

Let Live and Let Ghosts bounces joyfully from miniature rock operas to dreamy multiple-movement pop songs, allowing Thornewill and Co. to really show their stuff.

The repetition of piano on “Good Day” imposes the band’s glee on the listener and the lyrics encase the song with a sense of cheerfulness, letting the chorus’ “Whoa-oh-oh-oh” backdrop take the listener to a happier time.

Composing music that soaks the soul in a balm of often-ridiculous merriment, Let Live and Let Ghosts is a peppy album that doesn’t lack depth. The compositions mosey through tempo changes on the stirring “Beady Eyes on the Horizon” to calm balladry on the affectionate and moving “My Heart’s the Same” with a gentle sense of control, giving the listener a continually developing experience.

All in all, Let Live and Let Ghosts is an exciting album filled with remarkably sunny and alluring sing-along-pop righteousness. Thornewill, Siegel, and Kristin are a taut unit who seem born to deliver records like this.

Set against a sea of comparisons to Queen and They Might Be Giants, Jukebox the Ghost might have a lot of living up to do, but I think they’ll fare rather well.

7.5/10

Spiritualized’s sixth studio album is a special one. Coming five years after their previous album, Amazing Grace from 2003, and following frontman Jason Pierce’s near-death experience after he contracted an inflammation and infection of the eyelid and bilateral pneumonia, Songs in A&E is a dramatic set of sweet delights.

The album’s title takes its name from the long period of time Pierce spent in the Accident and Emergency ward and the songs are dedicated to the staff at The Royal London Hospital where he received treatment. While most of the songs were written before Pierce fell ill, the sense in which he vocalizes the sentiments gives each track an added weight through his experiences.

Instead of glooming it up with senseless foolishness, Pierce conducts things skilfully and turns out a stunning record. The soundscapes are complete and fascinating, unfolding with tenderness and a sort of considered calm as though Pierce is reminding us of the preciousness of life without getting sappy.

Indeed, much of Spiritualized’s Songs in A&E has poignancy embedded in the structure. Pierce isn’t afraid to cut deeper, though, and some of the songs contain copious amounts of ache and resentment (“You Lie You Cheat”). For the most part, though, Songs in A&E is a life-affirming and gorgeous record with a strong sense of humanity to it.

Inspiring music is often tough to rate, especially when so many bands in search of the perfect uplifting record are prone to venture into a sort of Coldplay-on-steroids feel. With Spiritualized, however, it feels authentic.

“Death Take Your Fiddle” is, all at once, bleak and rousing. When Pierce sings “So Death take your fiddle/play a song for me,” one can’t help but flinch.

Pierce’s small, conked-out vocals are what tie each track together. Musically, things are accurate and on-point but not overly unique. It is the broken words and intonations that make Songs in A&E something significant, as Pierce often sounds like a prophet that’s been to the other side and can’t decide whether it’s heaven or hell he prefers.

“I Gotta Fire” sounds like a barn-burning rock nightmare, while “Baby I’m Just a Fool” brings the tenderness back into the scenery. Most of Songs in A&E feels like forlorn thoughts cast out from a hospital bed when the future isn’t certain but optimism still reigns supreme.

Spiritualized’s Songs in A&E is perfect music for listening to the end or the beginning of your life. Its CD booklet contains a powerful visual theme of intravenous drip catheters designed to serve as deliverance, but it’s the music that really offers spiritual cover here.

Containing moving songs with genuine soul and passion, this is Spiritualized’s best album to date and a wonderful study of the extremes of the human experience.

9/10

I have this recurring dream where Paris Hilton is getting her ass kicked while trying to sing “Stars Are Blind” to a crowd of a couple hundred confounded onlookers. The Heiress is trying to make her way through the ironic line “Some people never go beyond their stupid pride” with that silly backing track coming out of a tape recorder perched on the stage behind her when she’s knocked right square in the face by a Converse shoe. In my dream, someone roundhouse kicks Paris Hilton in the face. It’s the single greatest visual I’ve had of her that didn’t take place in night-vision green.

When the dream ends, I have no idea who roundhouse kicked Paris Hilton and I wake up with a Cheshire cat grin on my face. My wife gives me a look and says “You had that dream again” and I nod.

One day while making my way through MySpace, I came across FARCHILD and knew instantly that she was the owner of that Converse shoe. Something about the way she looks, about the way she appears to defy convention by her very existence, tells me that she’s the one who roundhouse kicked the Heiress.

Now after checking out her debut, Chivalry Has Died, I’m more than convinced she’s the one. FARCHILD (or Jane C.) is the personification of the do-it-yourself grassroots indie artist. She is the executive producer and the sound engineer. She wrote, produced, arranged, programmed, and engineered all of Chivalry Has Died. She plays guitar, keys, drums, bass, and electronics. She sings, raps, screams, and growls.

FARCHILD does it all.

Chivalry Has Died contains music written and created between 2006 and 2008 and represents the arrival of FARCHILD as the quintessential ass-kicking female out of Seattle with a story to tell and an attitude that chews up pop princesses and spits them out. Her lyrics are audacious and clever, providing a nice breather from the usual worthless pageantry. When someone can use words like “lascivious” without flinching or sounding glitzy, something special’s going on.

The musical tapestries of Chivalry Has Died are incredible. Songs emerge out of the fog and contain walls of sound and stunning pieces of melody. Tunes dip in and out as FARCHILD experiments with the disposition of her instruments, never scared of venturing outside the box and always adeptly toying with the elements. The album is bookended with a couple of instrumental tracks (“Quite a Bomb” and “Peter Piper”) which add a sense of obedient ambiance to the project.

With just eight tracks, Chivalry Has Died is unhappily a touch on the short side. Luckily it doesn’t lack any of the impact of a full album and FARCHILD manages to say in eight songs what many artists couldn’t say in twenty.

The striking and haunting composition “Red Moon” sets things in motion and FARCHILD’s dazzling vocals intone such poetry as “Now so potent, skulking stale scent nestled under my tongue” with philosophical openness.

Other songs are a bit more mischievous, like the standout “Ey, Papi.” The track takes aim at the club pick-up game, with FARCHILD steadily in control of the game and threatening to knock some poor sap’s tooth out if he doesn’t submit to her demands for respect and honesty. “I am anything but docile, so don’t bend me,” she says.

FARCHILD takes aim at consumerist culture and quick fixes on tracks like “Timmy’s a Rebel” and “Quo,” the latter of which describes people who go to great lengths to cheat Father Time but couldn’t care less about the state of the nation as it sinks beneath their feet.

FARCHILD means business and she demands your attention but won’t beg for it. A thrilling project with equal parts art and accessibility, Chivalry Has Died contains a literary compendium of lyrics and a vigorous dose of attitude wrapped up in vastly entrancing compositions. Jane C. is a remarkably gifted individual with a lot to say and an unbending attention to detail that allows her to turn out some of the most compelling music of the year thus far.

Chivalry Has Died is available for purchase through FARCHILD’s website and you can drop by her MySpace page for a glimpse into her mad, mad world. Watch out for her Converse, though. I hear she’s got a lethal fucking roundhouse.

8.5/10

The minimalist folk sounds of The Accidental have a very soothing quality and listening to There Were Wolves is a gently moving experience that deserves lots of repetition. Released in April of 2008, There Were Wolves is a gorgeous collection of soft songs that meld together with dreamy precision to create a record that conjures notions of Iron & Wine.

The Accidental, as the name might suggest, came together almost by accident. Starting with Stephen Cracknell (Memory Band) and Sam Genders (Tunng), the UK-based band came together as the result of an assortment of meanderings and chance encounters.

Genders and Cracknell first met at the Green Man festival and decided to mail each other CDs back and forth. Another member, Hannah Caughlin (The Bicycle Thieves), stumbled into the eventual quartet through the happy providence of being introduced to Cracknell as a potential housemate. The fourth member, Liam Bailey joined after turning up at a Memory Band gig.

The result of such advantageous occurrences is a band whose sound feels as natural and unintentional as the way the group came together. With a firm belief in the freedom of the music, The Accidental set upon making There Were Wolves via a PC with the help of the members’ friends and a solid musical sense as the map to buried musical treasure.

There Were Wolves matches the feel of the creation, unfolding merrily as though a group of friends is sitting around strumming and piecing together songs in your basement. Despite fitting firmly in the folk genre, The Accidental is undaunted by carrying out musical tests and mischievously experiments with broad textures, strings, and sound effects all through the course of the record.

Each member of the band sings parts on There Were Wolves, adding to the freer feel of the album and creating a luxuriant, broad sound. With an immensely creative introduction in “Knock, Knock,” which was remixed by Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard and given a shadowy electronic music character, the album takes off with a vibe that MOJO calls “folktronica.”

The Accidental keeps things pretty basic despite the genre-splicing adventurism, allowing things to flow through the basic folk paces on tracks like the sound-effect-laden “Jaw of a Whale” and the sway of “Illuminated Red.”

There are two instrumentals (“Slice Open the Day” and “The Killing Floor”). Both tracks unfold beautifully like sun poking through a window’s gossamer curtains. The quality of the quartet’s exquisite compositions is evident on these tracks, with swirling instruments and strings delivering nothing sort of pure atmospheric heaven.

The Accidental’s There Were Wolves is a stunning and lush recording punctuated by pleasant compositions, delicate melodies, and the gorgeous work of all four vocalists. It is an incredible folk record and contains some of the best music I’ve heard all year.

8/10

In pre-industrial societies around the world, peasants made up the majority of the people. They were a class of people that, while above artisans in Mediterranean class systems, generally toiled and worked fields for next to nothing. Peasants worked to generate wealth for the ruling class, by and large, and suffered under the notion of being virtually expendable as individuals.

Yet as a whole, societies could not last without the peasant class. Peasants formed social networks of their own, supporting one another and protecting each other from the harms of the climates in which they worked as well as external threats. Sooner or later, in most societies, the peasants would revolt after years of hard treatment and nothing to show for it.

Peasants would endure by creating stories and songs out of the dust of their everyday experiences. Finding comfort in bleak environments became a survival mechanism and provided the framework on which many peasants mounted their revolt against the ruling class. Without such small comforts of song and storytelling from troubadours and the like, many peasants would lack the courage to take on bigger tasks.

Damien DeRose, from Doylestown, PA, arrives with the humility of one of the working class. Performing under the name of Peasant, DeRose seems to exemplify the simplicity of musical creation in light of dark times. With an ostensibly perfect set of circumstances to fuel the flames of his own artistic revolt, Peasant is the ideal songwriter to resemble the struggle.

Like Elliot Smith, Peasant is a troubadour with stories in his travel bag. Head down as though years of struggle and strife have placed him under the earth, his ability to silence a crowd with a simple acoustic guitar is never in doubt and his shyness serves as a powerful asset in his own personal rebellion against the ruling class.

With On the Ground, Peasant has collected a series of stories and songs that would bolster any dejected listener and grant assurance to any weary proletarian. Able to construct valiant textures with uncomplicated production and delicate lyrics, Peasant’s latest record on Paper Garden Records is a more than fitting follow-up to Fear Not, Distant Lover.

As discussed, societies could not last without the peasant class. In the case of DeRose, his examination of the world around him and interactions within the social classes make him an essential part of our world. His storytelling ability is akin to Simon and Garfunkel, drawing on personal experiences to weave tales of existence from his perspective.

Peasant’s soft intonations bring the lyrical beauty of songs like “Fine Is Fine” to epic levels, allowing the minimalistic sound to course its way through winding rivers of gentleness and nuance. His free approach to song-writing is palpable on tracks like the stunningly lush “The Wind” and the somewhat risky “Birds,” both of which expose a more audacious side.

When it comes to balladry, Peasant delivers songs with splendour and texture that are hard to match in current music. The maddeningly elegant “Raise Today” is highlighted by soft vocals and affectionate acoustic plucking.

Peasant does his best Paul Simon impression on “Impeccable Manners,” a remarkable song in which he tests his vocal range and plucks charmingly on his guitar. Other songs work the same angle faultlessly, using folk music and moving lyrics to offer simple songs from the heart. The album’s title track is another fine example of Peasant’s ability to tell wonderful stories on a folk backdrop worthy of the best in the business.

In a day and age when many artists suffer and toil for the ruling class, Peasant is able to tell stories of his time and offer calm in gloomy surroundings of darkening skies. For many, his music will mend old wounds and offer comfort for new days. He is an extraordinary talent worthy of leading the rebellion and On the Ground is a nice way to get acquainted with this gifted artist.

8.5/10

Picturing some Nashville bank teller with slick horn-rimmed glasses, a kitschy red sweater, and exorbitant amounts of make-up and perfume is probably a good way to distinguish Darla Farmer. Having drawn the name from a bank teller out of Music City that most likely matched that description, Darla Farmer is an unusual seven-piece collective with a job to do on Rewiring the Electric Forest, its full-length debut on Paper Garden Records.

I’ve had more genre discussions about bands like these than I’d care to remember. Sliding an album into the player and having friends walk in and wonder “What the hell is that?” has often been a significant part of my life and Darla Farmer would be sure to draw out a similar response. As such, I decided to tuck myself away for this one.

Good thing I did. Rewiring the Electric Forest is an enormously peculiar merger of frantic energy, folksy bedlam, and…yes, carnival rock. Reading the press release, I saw the term and laughed aloud, spitting milk everywhere.

Upon hearing “The Quotient,” I knew what they were on about. No sense cryin’ over spit milk, after all.

Remember having visions of those tiny cars and about 50 clowns packed in? That’s what comes to mind with Rewiring the Electric Forest and its eclectic liveliness.
When the first track pops open, it’s like a jack-in-the-box with a dorky smirk has just burst out of some hidden corner in your mind. Singer Clint Wilson bounds about like a ringleader to the most chaotic carnival freak show ever. The rest of the band stacks bleats of trombone, trumpet, piano, and guitar around Wilson’s wildness.

Wilson lisps and rambles tenaciously through “History” and other songs like it with the mumbling-and-stumbling delivery of a drunken circus clown with a bottle of Jack Daniels in the back pocket of his huge polka-dotted pants. Somewhere, Darla Farmer is giving someone the right change.

The contrast is funny, but entirely precise. Darla Farmer melds madness with modesty to form a fluent blend of Arcade Fire-meets-Frankenstein’s bride lunacy.

There’s a constitution to the carnival rock, as skilled work stretches the rock seams of “Mechanical Thoughts” to enchanting levels beyond the emblematic call-and-response that the song previews with its intro.

Other songs teasingly bound and fuss about, like the feverish “The Strangler Fig” and the Mexican hat dance from hell found on “Dirty Keys.”

The chaos doesn’t mean that Darla Farmer doesn’t have a strong sense of gorgeous melody, however. Tracks like the dazzling and hilariously-titled “The Cow That Drank Too Much” and the pensive “The Vigilant Mr. Lynch” show the band’s softer gentler side. The instruments come together admirably, slowing things down under the Big Top.

Still, Darla Farmer isn’t for everyone. The album reads like a frenetic admonitory tale of a carnival funhouse that eats its guests and then falls in love with them. The vivacious and often startling efforts of Wilson and Co. are always fascinating, never inert, and constantly sprouting from song to song so that Rewiring the Electric Forest feels like a journey of progress and yearning.

8/10

Berkeley hip hop and indie rock artist Yoni Wolf is the core of Why?, an abstract-hip hop-indie rock-folk band whose flair for blowing through genres is unmistakable on their latest release from anticon. Alopecia, possibly named for hair loss and possibly named for nothing at all, is the band’s third LP.

It’s easy to peg Why? as an alternative rap group, but the work on Alopecia extends so far beyond one tangible genre that pegging the music is an impossible mission worthy of the A-Team or some other crew of badasses more suited to solving impossible missions.

Wolf’s erratic use of rap vocals and singing wreaks mayhem all over Alopecia, uncompromisingly spewing his stream of consciousness smartass lyrics without a break in the action.

In other words, forget all about genre categorizations with Why? because it won’t do a bit of good.

Of course, trying to place Why? can be helpful in describing what comes out of the speakers during a spin of Alopecia. Is that a lovely poppy tune? Or is that a dark ominous backdrop? Say, is that a standard hip hop verse spliced by an abnormal background of keys and guitar? Is that moody ambiance? The answer is, of course, a big fat reverberating YES.

Alopecia begins with a solid example of Wolf’s release, as he rap-sings over the life-size bass and hand-claps of “The Vowels Pt. 2.” He pours over the track like he’s running from something, letting off bubbly “Cheery-ay, Cheery-ee, Cheery-ii, Cheery-oh, Cheery-you” bleats as the song pulsates through its chorus. Sound outlandish? It is. And that’s just what’s enthralling about this record.

Why? also features Yoni’s brother Josiah and Doug McDiarmid. For Alopecia, the band is joined by Fog’s Andrew Broder and bassist Mark Erickson to create a fuller sound. That chock-a-block sound is used to most impressive levels on “The Hollows,” a roomy guitar-rock track that still somehow works over Yoni’s often awkward delivery.

On “Good Friday,” his voice drops to the depths for an almost bored-sounding delivery that calls up bits of Beck during some verses. The track finds Yoni running the litany of deplorable sins, using the track as a confessional of the weird and spewing lines like “playing lead lay in a bad way on Broadway” and “using Purell till my hands bleed and swell” with derisive delight.

And that’s generally the way things go with Alopecia. It’s like Yoni’s cracked his journal open to a random page and started spitting the speckled results in front of a backing band, choosing to sing when the mood hits him and lighting up the mic the rest of the time. For those who can take such a shuffling and contemptuous disposition, Why?’s Alopecia will probably fill a void long since left empty by other half-assed efforts from lesser monsters.

“I can decide/while I’m alive I’ll feel alive/and what’s next/I guess I’ll know when I’ve gotten there.”

8/10

With determination, you can accomplish quite a lot in under three minutes. In terms of Newmarket’s Tokyo Police Club, entire stories can be told in under three minutes and melodies can bob and weave through the confines of indie rock and post-punk revival without being hasty. On Elephant Shell, the Ontario group’s first LP, that’s just what they do.

With only one song clocking in over three minutes and a total runtime a smidgen under 28 minutes, Elephant Shell is one of the most succinct albums of the year and matches with REM’s Accelerate for depth through concision. The music is intricate and yet carries an unfussiness that creates melodies that are utterly hummable and alluring.

The bar was set pretty high after the critically-acclaimed Lesson in Crime EP, as its quick introduction to the band tore through 16-minutes of blazing guitar-riff heaven. In danger of perhaps being too to the point, Tokyo Police Club waited a year and a half before finally dropping Elephant Shell last month. The wait was worth it.

One of the things instantly apparent is how frontman David Monks has expanded on the themes in Lesson in Crime and tears a slightly Decemberists-quality swath through Elephant Shell. The lyrics are strong, painting elegant word pictures that sail over the band’s pensive pop surroundings with ease. Monks’ lyrics are genuine, yet filled with a sense of gloom and desolation at times. Always eloquent, one can get a deep sense of insight with his simple phrases.

Songs begin suddenly and end just as abruptly, such as the album’s first track, “Centennial.” As though setting the bar for short, effective anthems, “Centennial” works as an overture and as a sign of things to come.

Other songs pour brilliantly into small spaces, like the graceful “Tessellate” with its spirited lyrics and clap-along tempo. Monks’ description of “all the kids who cut their knees on that old schoolyard fence” calls upon grey-skied memories and tickles of rebellion.

Monks and Co. deliver songs with mental clarity, unfolding pictures and dusty memories with a simple swoop of phraseology or an elegant flourish of guitar and keyboard. Songs like “Sixties Remake” and the bouncy “Your English is Good” showcase the group’s conciseness, as tight bass lines play with sharp rhythm and background vocals to create immediate poppy sticks of musical dynamite.

Always sharp and never tedious, Elephant Shell is a phenomenal follow-up to Lesson in Crime and serves as a beautiful collection of lyrics and quick songs that get to the point and linger long after the closing notes melt away.

9/10

The folk indie duo is far from extinct, as The Dodos and Wye Oak have illustrated with excellent releases this year. The Dodos consist of Meric Long and Logan Kroeber, are based out of San Francisco and have released Visiter in March of this year.

The trouble with the folk indie duo format is that the music often sounds the same and it can be difficult finding a band or album with enough distinctive qualities to set them apart from the usual minimalistic fluff of the genre.

With both of the aforementioned groups and their respected releases, however, that distinctiveness is undamaged and the expedition to get as far away from the fuzz of White Stripes has begun. While Wye Oak relies on an atmospheric approach, The Dodos use a more stripped-down approach to folk music. Long and Kroeber know their melodies, sure, but the fun is in the creation and evolution of each tune.

The Dodos’ Visiter is free-spirited stuff. The melodies unstitch organically and Long and Kroeber play with reckless abandon, putting them a long way ahead of coffee shop darlings and fuzzed-out anonymous bands. The acoustic/percussion/stomping combination serves the songs well as both hand-clappers and reflective ditties.

The over-seven-minute jam on “Joe’s Waltz” runs the range of stomping-good-fun and elegant spacious melodies, showing the range of the group. The album’s lead single, “Jodi,” begins with high-spirited guitar and heads right into breakneck territory with its untidy hoedown sound. And “Ashley,” dedicated to some other flame for certain, plays with backing vocals in such an elated manner that it’s hard not to fall in love. “What are you thinking of? Ashley. Who are you dreaming of? Ashley.” Yeah, me too.

The Dodos have the exceptional ability to play their own sound with such meticulousness that many of the songs feel like disobedient improvisations. The slide guitar on “Paint the Rust” feels every bit like the front porch burner that it should be and actually conjures up visions of Led Zeppelin III, if only for a moment.

Visiter is a mesmerizing album that invites the listener in to the shape-shifting melodies and delicate arrangements without airs. Long and Kroeber bring the fun and adventure of good music back to the surface of the indie genre, blissfully and furtively clomping past sound-alike groups with wild and unyielding delight. The Dodos represent the purity of music and Visiter could not have come at a better time.

8/10