Review: Peter Wolf Crier, Garden of Arms

On their 2009 debut album Inter-Be, Twin Cities duo Peter Wolf Crier put an appealing spin on indie-folk thanks to the orthogonal approaches of its two creative halves, with the downcast, Nick Drakean songwriting and high-pitched, haunting vocals of Peter Pisano sent off in unexpected directions by the refreshingly experimental production of percussionist/engineer Brian Moen. Since it worked so well the first time, it’s good to find the duo doubling down on its collaborative technique on Garden Of Arms. Moen deepens and expands on Inter-Be’s rich palette, building out Pisano’s meditative and even somber songs into complex, layered creations spiced with surprising fills, melodic touches, and glitchier elements that keep the mood from ever settling in one place. It’s clearly a more polished piece of work than its predecessor, but never slick or lacking in personality, and never dull.

At the same time, the sometimes-confounding complexity also means the album lacks Inter-Be’s immediate charm. Sometimes the commendable desire to keep the sonic environment unpredictable and engaging gets in the way of a potentially great song, as on the lovely, lonely ballad “Having It Out,” whose abrupt finish undercuts the impact of its soaring, Arcade Fire-like emotion. But far more often, the constantly evolving layers of drum riffs and harmonies galvanize the material into something that practically demands repeated listens to savor its piquancy. “Right Away” and “Hard Heart” prove how compelling the band’s approach can be on more uptempo numbers, but the ethereal “Wheel” keeps the multi-faceted production in full spin without sacrificing its quiet and contemplative beauty.

Originally published Sept. 6, 2011 on avclub.com. Read the complete article.

Review: Nick Mamatas, Sensation

In his 2004 debut novel, Move Under Ground, Nick Mamatas handled what could have been a gimmicky premise—a fight for the soul of America between H.P. Lovecraft’s evil chaos god Cthulhu and a ragtag crew of Beat writers led by Jack Kerouac—with intelligence, depth, and wit. Unfortunately, he’s on considerably shakier ground in his third novel, Sensation, which fumbles to an unfocused conclusion after a strong beginning.

Sensation’s central idea spins off from one of biology’s creepier parasitic relationships: the Costa Rican wasp Hymenoepimecis, which plants its eggs in a living victim, a spider of the genus Plesiometa, then chemically alters the spider’s behavior so it willingly builds a nest for the larvae that will eat it alive. Mamatas takes that a step further, imagining a secret war between the arthropods that has spilled over into our realm. Although the conflict has been raging for thousands of years, the humans are completely unaware of it, thanks to the Matrix-like machinations of the spiders, who have been keeping understandably quiet about the fact that they’re actually a collective superintelligence with long-term plans for a forcible symbiotic relationship with Homo sapiens. Both species envenom human minds for their own purposes; the wasps inspire anarchy and chaos, while the spiders seek conformity and control. Colonies of the arachnids observe and influence history in disguise, riding in the hollowed-out heads of artificially constructed “men of indeterminate ethnicity.”

The spiders’ carefully guarded secrecy is thrown into jeopardy when their wasp enemies sting an ordinary middle-class New York City woman, Julia Hernandez. The wasp venom is just as bizarrely potent on humans as spiders, and it wreaks profound changes in Julia’s personality. Without knowing she’s changing, Julia transforms into a radically different person, with anarchist politics and a brutally direct penchant for cutting right to the point. In Sensation’s most potent sequence, Julia leaves her husband Ray at gunpoint in the middle of sex, cruelly refusing to give a reason because “I like the idea that your stomach just turned to concrete.” With no apparent plan in mind, she becomes the catalyst of a nationwide movement of Dada-esque hipster anarchists, then murders a rich capitalist and turns fugitive. Ray watches this from afar in helpless confusion; the spiders view it with dispassionate alarm, certain it’s a new skirmish in the millennia-old deathlock with their insect enemies.

It’s a compelling setup worthy of Philip K. Dick, and Julia’s horrifying transformation seems like a promising jumping-off point for Mamatas to explore how biology affects the big questions of whether there’s any such thing as free will or a single “self.” Is Julia a helpless pawn driven insane by forces beyond her comprehension, or her own true self for the first time?

But after a strong first 50 pages, Mamatas doesn’t seem to know where to take his story. Julia’s anarchist revolution bogs down in annoying stunts and tired twists on Internet catchphrases, leading one bored sheriff to yawn that “there ain’t no criminal statutes against being tedious.” A mid-novel revelation of the wasps’ true motivations drains the book of any further dramatic potential, and even seems hostile to the idea of striving for positive change against oppression. Weirdly, Sensation throws its most caustic satiric barbs at hipster poseurs, not the near-totalitarian aims of the spiders, which comes across as if Mamatas has switched allegiances this time, from Kerouac to Cthulhu.

Originally published May 19, 2011 on avclub.com. Read the complete article.

Review: Minor Kingdom, Don’t Worry Baby

Music doesn’t necessarily have to strike you like lightning in order to work its way into your heart. The songs of Minor Kingdom will never inspire anyone to reckless abandon or lead to a mass outbreak of dancing in the streets. And that’s okay—that isn’t the point. Like Nick Drake, Elliott Smith, and Bon Iver before him, songwriter Kristian Melom is after a more introspective, unhurried and thoughtful kind of beauty. Don’t Worry Baby, his second album after 2009’s My Back Will Bend, is a carefully crafted set of slow, somber indie-folk ballads shot through with a tinge of mournful alt-country and grounded by Melom’s serious, pensive vocals—perhaps too grounded.

This is a record that needs a little time alone in order to win you over, working its mojo in the background during a quiet evening at home, curled up with a book. That intimacy is the album’s most charming element, but also its Achilles’ heel: Don’t Worry Baby is so soft-spoken and unprepossessing that it’s in danger of being overwhelmed like a spiderweb caught in a strong breeze, and the subtle qualities that are the album’s strengths are too easily drowned out. And there are plenty of delightful touches throughout Don’t Worry Baby, like the wash of shoegaze-y guitar that floats through “Sweet Emily,” the gossamer acoustic filigree in “Crazy Charlie,” and the wistful angelic chorus of “ooohs” on the album-closing “Good Luck.” But it’s a fine line between introspective and enervating, and a little more oomph would not have gone amiss here.

Originally published May 12, 2011 on avclub.com. Read the complete article.

Recap: Wire at First Avenue

Neither Wire or its audience are getting any younger, and the preponderance of greying and bald heads onstage was equalled at First Avenue on Sunday by the grizzled and gleaming domes in the crowd, most of which appeared to be atop bodies in their 40s or 50s. But age has hardly mellowed the English art-punks, who bookended their set with a pair of roaring rockers spanning their long career, kicking off with the poundingly aggressive “Comet” from 2003’s Send, and winding up with a volcanic version of the title track from their 1977 debut, Pink Flag, which built up into a storm of noise and feedback.

Originally published April 11, 2011 on avclub.com. Read the complete article.

Review: Tapes N Tapes, Outside

The Minneapolis indie-rockers in Tapes ‘N Tapes were both the beneficiaries and victims of their own rapid ascent, riding a wave of breathless praise for their self-produced 2005 debut full-length The Loon to a deal with influential label XL and status as one of the year’s biggest buzz bands. The multitudinous Pixies and Pavement comparisons were a lot to live up to, but The Loon largely deserved them, with catchy hooks and jangly energy that kept the music constantly shifting in unexpected directions. That momentum dissipated with the disappointing 2008 follow-up Walk It Off, which gained something from Dave Fridmann’s slicker production, but squandered its promise on rambling, unfocused material.

Citing a desire to recapture the freewheeling spirit of earlier days, Tapes ‘N Tapes parted ways with XL and went back to its DIY indie roots for Outside, self-releasing the album. Musically, though, Outside mostly recapitulates Walk It Off’s sluggishness. Beyond the vivacious, offbeat jangle-rock of “Freak Out,” there’s far too much meandering and repetitive noodling, and little of the joyfulness that made songs like “Insistor” such fun. There are a few high points, including the building energy of “Outro” and the moody textures of “On And On,” the latter reminiscent of David Bowie’s Low. But overall, the slow pace only heightens the sense that there are too few exciting ideas in play; like a car trip across North Dakota, Outside takes a long time to get where it’s going, and doesn’t offer enough of interest along the way.

Originally published Jan. 11, 2011 on avclub.com. Read the complete article.

Recap: The Hold Steady, Meat Puppets, and Retribution Gospel Choir at First Avenue

“We are The Hold Steady, and we’re gonna have a good time tonight!”

Usually when a singer introduces his band like that on stage, it’s just a platitude, an easy way to warm up the crowd. But when Craig Finn says it in Minneapolis, and particularly at First Avenue, you can be damn sure he means it. In strict terms of residency, The Hold Steady might be a New York band, but its heart has always been here in Minnesota. That’s hardly a secret, of course—Finn has been mining his Minneapolis past for lyrical material ever since he and fellow expat Tad Kubler formed THS out of the ashes of Lifter Puller, using it as an essential backdrop for his long-running, loosely connected song cycle about being young and down-and-out. The passing of years makes the theme increasingly nostalgic and hazy with each successive album, but it doesn’t seem like Finn will drop it anytime soon—not when Heaven Is Whenever kicks off with a line about living on Hennepin Avenue.

So when The Hold Steady comes home to the bar one block away, they own that stage. And that’s because we Twin Citians own The Hold Steady. Never mind New York; these guys are ours. “I don’t think anyone understands what we’re talking about half as well as you guys do,” Finn acknowledged during “Little Hoodrat Friend.” Finn makes an unlikely rock star, dressed in a black button-down short-sleeve shirt like a guy from the IT department who’s busting out a few of Mick Jagger’s moves. He had a look of pure joy on his face the whole night, and it was mirrored in the ecstatic mood of the audience, which burst into explosive life for the headliners after an appreciative but more subdued response to openers The Meat Puppets. The crowd clearly knew all the songs by heart and sang along to every syllable.

Originally published Dec. 30, 2010 on avclub.com. Read the complete article.

Review: The Book Of Right On, All These Songs About Music

The Book Of Right On, All These Songs About Music (Half Door Records)

For years now, David Joe Holiday has been one of the Twin Cities music scene’s most consistently compelling creative forces. But the propulsive, controlled chaos of his songwriting has been matched by an inability to keep a band together, with both Kentucky Gag Order and Belles Of Skin City breaking up just when they were starting to show their potential. With any luck, the third time will be the charm, because the Holiday-fronted Book Of Right On has all the elements that made his old projects great: complex, intricate polyrhythmic percussion, a sly sense of humor, and plenty of head-pounding, punk-rock power.

Originally published Dec. 22, 2010 on avclub.com as part of a group-written roundup. Read the complete article.

Review: Einstüe Neubauten, Strategies Against Architecture IV

Born out of the Berlin performance-art scene in the early 1980s, Einstüe Neubauten (along with Throbbing Gristle) staked out the most confrontational, challenging territory of the then-new industrial genre. The group’s deliberately cacophonic approach reverberated in more dance-floor-ready groups like Ministry and Front 242, as well as art-punks like Wire, but Neubauten pushed sonic deconstruction to the limits of tolerance. The results were often harsh and frightening, and less recognizable as music than as recordings of some deadly forklift accident in a sheet-metal factory. The band’s output slowed after leader Blixa Bargeld joined Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds, but always kept clawing at the edge of the experimental frontier. That uncompromising aesthetic (not to mention lyrics that were mainly in German) ensured a limited cult audience, but Neubauten’s influence can be heard in later bands from Mr. Bungle to TV On The Radio.

Neubauten celebrates its 30th anniversary with the double-disc Strategies Against Architecture IV, its fourth retrospective compilation. Picking up studio recordings and rarities from 2002 to 2010, it showcases a band that may be older and mellower than the explosive early sturm und drang, but still remains far ahead of most others of its kind. Bargeld and company explore textured, even minimalist territory on the chilling drone of “Insomnia,” while the more propulsive “Dead Friends (Around The Corner)” and “GS1 & GS2” put them in company with Wire’s recent Read & Burn series. Ironically, for a band whose very name expressed its anarchist tendencies—it means “Collapsing New Buildings”—Neubauten has long since proved that its music has staying power.

Originally published Dec. 7, 2010 on avclub.com. Read the complete article.

Review: Various artists, Tradi-Mods Vs. Rockers

When the electrifying, trancelike street music spearheaded by veteran Congolese band Konono No. 1 reached Western ears in the early 2000s, it sounded like something beamed in from Mars. Konono’s music was based around traditional instruments like the likembe thumb piano, but the need to use hand-built, jury-rigged amplifiers to be heard on busy Kinshasa streets brought in heavy, loud distortion that gave Konono a rough, propulsive, hypnotic edge. It sounded weirdly and radically modern—the same kind of thing that forward-thinking punk and electronic musicians like Sonic Youth had been playing around with for years, but approached from an entirely unexpected angle.

The Konono aesthetic has had some time now to filter through Western indie-rock and electronica, and it’s expanded intriguingly on the double-disc compilation Tradi-Mods Vs. Rockers, which opens up the floor to 26 American, British, and German indie bands who rework material from Konono and other Congolese bands, including Kasai Allstars. The results are largely enthralling, and sometimes nearly as revelatory as Konono itself sounded in 2004. Heard in context on Tradi-Mods, for instance, the seamlessly incorporated influence of Konono on Andrew Bird’s electronically processed, looped violin is obvious. The disc is a triumph, and a great example of what a remix album should be: reverent to what made the original material fascinating, but not so much that it can’t fly away in its own unexpected directions.

Originally published Nov. 30, 2010 on avclub.com. Read the complete article.

Recap: Grinderman at First Avenue

From his earliest days in the 1970s with Boys Next Door, and later The Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds, Australia’s Nick Cave has always trafficked in a swampy, machismo-laden stew of sex and sleaze-ridden spirituality. Even at his most gothically elegant, that electric charge of sinfulness is at the core of his art, whether in his songwriting or novels like The Death Of Bunny Munro. You’re never sure whether he’s going to buy you a shot of bourbon, rob you at knifepoint, or lecture you sternly on how God is coming soon to destroy the world. That’s also a big part of the magnetically dangerous stage presence that makes Cave one of the quintessential rock ’n’ roll frontmen, which he proved with a powerful show at First Avenue last night, performing with his latest project, Grinderman.

Originally published Nov. 24, 2010 on avclub.com. Read the complete article.