Review: Private Dancer, Trouble Eyes

A glance at the cover art for Private Dancer’s 2009 debut EP, Trouble Eyes, declares up front one element of the band’s sound: Covered with trippy, melting eyes, it echoes the psychedelic artwork on 13th Floor Elevators albums. And indeed there’s some heavy ’60s surf-garage churning around in here, but Private Dancer gleefully merges that with thrashier, wilder noise that grabs elements of The Stooges, Pavement, and early Pixies—not surprising considering the band features members of STNNNG and Hockey Night, but it’s impressive the way they weave and dodge between beauty and powerful dissonance. In October, the group followed Eyes with a new single, pairing a pounding original garage tune, “Ride To Work,” with a passionate and pitch-perfect cover of the Count Five’s psychedelic classic “Psychotic Reaction.”

Originally published in A.V. Club Twin Cities.

The best local music of 2009

My picks for the Minnesota music scene’s best albums of the year. Here’s #1:

1. P.O.S., Never Better
(Rhymesayers Entertainment)
Stef Alexander opens his third album with a down-to-earth apology for the three-year gap between Never Better and 2006′s Audition—”sorry I took so long,” he says, before launching into “Let It Rattle.” It’s the only thing the Doomtree rapper needs to be humble about when it comes to his music. Drawing energy as much from his punk-rock background as his hip-hop side, P.O.S. is as verbally propulsive and nimble here as Savion Glover, the dancer he namechecks on Never Better‘s third song. The Twin Cities is not exactly hurting for talent when it comes to underground hip-hop, but here’s a solid sign that P.O.S. will be counted in the highest echelons of that group for a long time to come.

Originally published on avclub.com Dec. 10, 2009. Read the complete article.

Suburbs guitarist Bruce Allen dies at 54

Guitarist Bruce C. Allen, a mainstay of the Twin Cities music scene best known for his work with New Wave band The Suburbs, died yesterday at 54. According to the Star Tribune, Allen was taken off life support after being admitted to Hennepin County Medical Center for complications resulting from triple bypass surgery. “Family and friends had time to gather around his bedside,” said Chris Osgood, guitarist for The Suicide Commandos and Allen’s friend and bandmate in his post-Suburbs group The X-Boys.

Allen co-founded The Suburbs in 1977 with four friends from, true to their name, the Twin Cities’ western suburbs. The following year, their self-titled debut EP was the first album to be released by esteemed local label Twin/Tone Records; The Suburbs went on to release four full-length albums, from 1980′s In Combo to 1986′s The Suburbs, including classic singles like “Love Is The Law,” “Rattle My Bones,” and the charmingly strange “Cows.” The band’s catchy fusion of New Wave pop, punk, funk, and dance music combined the suavity of Roxy Music, the manic energy of Iggy Pop, and the offbeat humor of Devo. They broke up in 1987, but reunited occasionally in subsequent years, last performing in 2006 on Harriet Island. Although co-frontmen Beej Chaney and Chan Poling tended to draw the most attention, Allen’s contribution to The Suburbs’ sound was significant, helping provide the driving rhythms and spiky, high-energy riffs that were part of their signature.

Also a graphic designer, Allen created logos and album-cover designs instantly familiar to many in the Twin Cities, including the cover of The Replacements’ Let It Be, the Uptown Bar’s sign, and The Suburbs’ own iconic five-men-in-a-circle logo (which can be seen at right, on the cover of the 2006 live album High Fidelity Boys).

He will be missed. Here are a couple of videos of The Suburbs in their prime, “Love Is The Law” and “Cows.”

Originally published on A.V. Club Twin Cities.

Review: The Chambermaids, Down In The Berries

The Chambermaids, Down In The Berries
(Modern Radio)

Twin Cities post-punk quartet The Chambermaids sounds like it might have stepped out of a time machine, freshly arrived from 1983. Its new seven-song Down In The Berries fits comfortably back-to-back with spiky, art-punk classics like Wire’s Chairs Missing or Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures, and though it’s undeniable that the band’s hardly breaking new ground by bringing that sound into 2009, it’s accomplished with real verve, driving rhythm, and a good ear for pop hooks and harmonies.

If ’80s post-punk is alive and well in The Chambermaids’ hands, though, the compact disc is dead in the gutter: Down In The Berries is only available on vinyl and as a download. It’s a trend that’s becoming increasingly common—Vampire Hands did the same thing for their new Hannah In The Mansion. Perhaps not coincidentally, VH’s Colin Johnson is also the former drummer for The Chambermaids, leaving them amicably shortly after recording Berries to focus on his other group. The Chambermaids have since picked up a new drummer in ex-Shotgun Monday skinsman Mickey Kahleck, and a second guitarist in STNNNG/Private Dancer ax-wielder Nate Nelson. Fronting the band are brother-and-sister co-vocalists Neil and Martha Weir, and their deft musical interplay is apparent not only in their harmonizing, but the way Neil’s My Bloody Valentine-esque guitar lines spark off Martha’s bass work. Johnson’s drumming, meanwhile, is almost brutally direct compared with Vampire Hands’ two-percussionist complexity. But the more simple approach serves the songs here well, giving the shoegaze-style title track a shot of adrenaline that works like a series of exclamation points. The weak link here is Neil’s flat and monotone singing, which serves the music adequately but without lending the dominant stamp of personality that Ian Curtis or Colin Newman gave their bands. Martha, on the other hand, adds liveliness everywhere the way Kim Deal spices up the Pixies, whether she’s just lending an “oooh-aah-oooh” in the background or taking the lead on “The East Place.”

Grade: B+

Upcoming shows: Aug. 29, Turf Club, Sept. 15, Triple Rock Social Club

The Chambermaids, “Lily”:


The Chambermaids perform “Down In The Berries” on 89.3 The Current:

Originally published Aug. 28, 2009 in The A.V. Club Twin Cities.

Review: Zak Sally, Zak Sally’s Fear Of Song

Zak Sally, Zak Sally’s Fear Of Song
(La Mano 21)

Zak Sally shifted his attention largely to graphic art after leaving Duluth slowcore trio Low in 2005, focusing on writing and drawing Recidivist, Sammy The Mouse, and the forthcoming Like A Dog, as well as running the small press La Mano 21, which releases books by artists like John Porcellino and William Schaff. While often dreamlike and full of wild invention, Sally’s comics also reveal his introspective and insecure side, and it wouldn’t be surprising to anyone familiar with them that he’s kept a full-fledged return to music at arm’s length, feeling hesitant despite his success with Low. Still, he’s kept a toe in that world via one-off gallery performances with bands like White Map, an unforgettably weird noise-rock duo in which he straps a gigantic loudspeaker to his head and emits electronic squawks; see below for a short video clip. But over time, he began working on music again in earnest, building up an album’s worth of material on his own, in his basement, performing all the instruments himself and producing with the help of Crazy Beast Studio’s Ben Durrant. Fear Of Song is clearly a very personal album, with the same raw, soul-baring openness he shows in Recidivist evident on the title song and in lines like, “If nobody hears us, then how do they know who to blame?” Sonically, it definitively shows that Alan Sparhawk wasn’t the only good songwriter in Low. Fear Of Song pushes the boundaries of the feedback-laced slowcore that Low was just beginning to explore on The Great Destroyer, Sally’s last album with that band, though not to the extent of the honking craziness of White Map. Sub Pop Records just released a 7-inch single of the song “Why We Hide,” but Sally is releasing the full album himself via La Mano in a handmade limited edition. (To raise the funds to do so, he recently sold the original painting he did for Great Destroyer on eBay.) He’ll perform at a combination La Mano benefit and CD-release show at Eclipse Records tonight with another of his bands, the formidably named TOGPTFFSOTWOTERATSYOA, a trio with Steel Pole Bathtub’s Dale Flattum and Cows/TVBC drummer Freddy Votel whose set list is hidden in its monstrous acronym: “Three Old Guys Play The First Five Songs Off The Wipers’ Over The Edge Record And The Song ‘Youth Of America.’”

Grade: B

White Map performs on a floating platform on the Mississippi River at the 2009 Art-A-Whirl Festival:

Originally published on A.V. Club Twin Cities.

Review: Pictures Of Then, And The Wicked Sea

Pictures Of Then, And The Wicked Sea
(Self-released)

Given the remarkably polished pop songcraft that Pictures Of Then exhibit on And The Wicked Sea—not to mention that the songs from their 2007 debut, Crushed By Lights, got airplay on MTV’s The Real World and The Hills—it’s hard to imagine that the next CD-release show the Minneapolis quartet plays will be at a venue as small as the Uptown Bar; here’s a band that seems destined for bigger audiences and greater acclaim. Wicked Sea flirts with glam rock and psychedelia, but builds its engaging sound on a solid foundation of guitar-driven indie rock in the style of Modest Mouse, though Pictures Of Then lean more toward pop beauty and strummy ballads than Isaac Brock’s rough-edged rock. That isn’t to say Pictures Of Then can’t rock, which they do on tracks like “History Of Bones” and the catchy, Cars-esque “When It Stings.” But while those songs pack some real punches, it’s Wicked Sea‘s more mid-tempo tunes—like the breezily rolling “Questions Anyone?” and piano-driven “Nowhere Is Somewhere”—that are the album’s secret weapons, giving lead vocalist Casey Call’s clear, bright tenor a good showcase.

Grade: A-

Originally published in A.V. Club Twin Cities.

Review: The Alarmists, The Overhead Left

The Alarmists, The Overhead Left
(Instrument Control Studios)

The Alarmists have gone through some turbulent changes in the past six months. Half the previous lineup left after a disagreement about the direction of what would become the band’s third disc, The Overhead Left, and singer/guitarist Eric Lovold regrouped with original members Joe Kuefler and Ryan McMillan. Scrapping a finished album already recorded with producer Andrew Lynch (Earlimart, Imperial Teen), Lovold’s new Alarmists re-recorded the entire thing in his home studio. Whatever the original material sounded like, the finished songs on Overhead Left are polished, uncluttered pop-rock that continue in the same vein as 2007′s The Ghost And The Hired Gun—and could stand to be a little more turbulent, in terms of shaking up the Alarmists’ preferred sound. Though there’s a bit of a Sgt. Pepper feel on “The Elusive Mr. Albright,” Overhead is too familiar. Lovold has a real talent for crafting mid-tempo, melodic tunes in the Guster vein, with winningly catchy work on “Hollywood’s Not My Home” and “Car Crashing” in particular. But The Alarmists don’t show much inclination to break out of that mold. If anything, they’re settling into it, since the sonic palette here is more restricted and monochromatic than either Ghost or the 2006 EP, A Detail Of Soldiers, that rightfully snared the band considerable local praise. The potential for greatness is as palpable here as on Soldiers, but the album never gets out of third gear.

Grade: B-

Originally published in A.V. Club Twin Cities.

Review: Tarlton, Papa Theses

Tarlton, Papa Theses
(Afternoon Records)

Brett Bullion first made his name as a drummer and electronica artist with the Minneapolis trio Tiki Obmar, which took a sampler-heavy twist on the genre of guitar-based indie rock. Since the mid-2000s, Bullion has gone solo under the new moniker Tarlton. He now creates ethereally beautiful instrumental soundscapes that live somewhere between ambient electronica and the loop-and-drum-based experiments of another Minneapolis drummer, Martin Dosh. He’s been slow to release anything new since 2005’s debut EP, Van, but this year brings two fresh Tarlton discs: a full-length out later this fall and the new three-song EP, Papa Theses. Recorded in Seattle with a single drum kit and laptop, the trio of 8-minute circuit-bent soundscapes float and weave like a flock of seabirds over the ocean, with graceful swoops of sonic motion. Unhurried but never uninteresting, the music evolves slowly, changing from moment to moment with no apparent need for a more insistent direction.

Grade: B

Originally published in A.V. Club Twin Cities.

Review: P.O.S., Never Better

Minneapolis rapper P.O.S. is known best as an MC in the Doomtree crew, but he keeps hardcore punk in his heart with active membership in the Twin Cities punk band Building Better Bombs. Each of his three solo rap albums has moved toward a progressively greater synthesis of his musical personalities, and Never Better has moments that are straight-up discordant, angry punk, particularly the screamed choruses on “Drumroll (We’re All Thirsty)” and “Optimist (We Are Not For Them).” He deals with that seeming dichotomy on the autobiographical “Out Of Category,” explaining that when he heard first heard punk rock, “the way they didn’t need to fit in, he found his kin.” It’s not so much that he’s out to deliberately create a cross-genre album, but more a reflection of his vision that punk and rap share plenty of common ground. Either way, it’s a great synthesis, merging verbally dexterous, rapid-fire syllable-spitting and a nimble sense of rhythm with lyrics that are clever, self-reflective, and full of sharp-edged political statements.

Originally published on avclub.com Feb. 3, 2009. Read the complete article.

Review: Paul Westerberg, 49:00

In the mid-’90s, Paul Westerberg was in danger of ruining his reputation as the songwriter for deeply influential alt-rockers The Replacements, thanks to a raft of bland solo material that showed little of the passion of classics like Let It Be or Tim. Thankfully, he’s recaptured more than enough of the Mats’ ragged glory by flying under the radar as Grandpaboy, and with his latest release under his own name, the lo-fi, self-recorded 49:00. Titled after Westerberg’s age (he turns 49 in December), it’s a loose, shaggy beast that throws together a collection of new songs, seemingly unfinished snippets, and a medley of classic-rock covers. (The latter is a single 44-minute mp3 with no official track listing or title, and it was released as an online-only 49-cent download less than a week after it was finished.)

Westerberg songs generally sound better when they’re roughed up a little—the Mats’ Don’t Tell A Soul is proof enough that he doesn’t shine when he’s too polished—and 49:00 doesn’t so much embrace that aesthetic as wrestle it to the ground in a big, joyous sprawl. Songs fade in and out, or smash into each other like cars at a demolition derby, cutting each other off and sometimes playing simultaneously. The jarring transitions, or lack thereof, might be frustrating for anyone expecting a traditional album, and it certainly ruins the mood of his heartbreaker about a father’s death to have the subsequent rave-up burst through like Kool-Aid Man in a funeral home. But that’s the way he wanted it—stating emphatically in all caps on his website that “ALL SOUNDS ARE INTENTIONAL AND VALID AS A WORK OF ART”—and it mostly works wonderfully, positioning Westerberg right where he ought to be, between Guided By Voices and the Stones’ Let It Bleed.

Originally published on avclub.com Aug. 4, 2008. Read the complete article.