Cameron's Record Reviews #3: Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? By The Unicorns

With my last review of Run Forever, I felt it important not to just rave about them - as someone writing about music for fun, it's far too easy just to write about how much you love your favorite bands (I'm looking at you, Bill), which isn't really helpful. A review should inform you about whatever it's talking about, I think, not just make clear how much the reviewer enjoys the subject. Bill.
(I feel no guilt for ripping on Sir William Doddithson the First, as he felt the need to vacate the virtual premises of the DPA blog.) Now, with that being said, TIME TO LAY ON THE PRAISE FOR THIS ALBUM.
Attention all indie rock musicians: you can stop now. Go ahead; put down your jangly guitars, pack up your glockenspiels, and stop tuning your violins. The fact of the matter is, Who Will Cut Our Hair is a tour de force; the Beethoven’s Fifth of indie rock. And all music in that genre since 2003 should be floundering in the Unicorn’s imperative of originality.
Now, before you accuse me of sensationalism, I’d like to point out that the Fifth Symphony comparison is not just to say “The Unicorns r rly rly gud.” I actually think they have a bit in common. For instance: most of the reviews of this album I’ve read have said, in so many words, that this band “abandons verse-chorus-verse structure.” They’re close, but if they were bigger musicology nerds, they’d know that the phrase they’re looking for is “through-composed,” meaning, “ relatively continuous, non-sectional, and/or non-repetitive.” This is in contrast to formal music, a category into which most modern rock fits. The Fifth is also largely through-composed, but this isn’t really the juicy part of the comparison. You see, Beethoven’s Fifth starts off minor and ends in major: the work represents a change, and is held together by reoccurring rhythmic motifs (bumbumbumBUUUUM) and the continuity of through-composition.
Has this gotten too dorky yet?
Anyway, Who Will Cut Our Hair accomplishes this idea of change in a similar way. It starts with “I Don’t Wanna Die”, and after 40 glorious minutes of exploring the theme of death (among other things), ends with “Ready To Die” (with a wonderful if cryptic reference to Biggie Smalls).
I don't mean to say that this is the greatest album ever; it just hits all the bases for what makes an album one of my favorites. It’s powerfully coherent, has a broad enough concept to spawn an album’s worth of material without being diffuse, and has catchy little riffs popping out of every nook and cranny. It’s sounds like the ‘corns literally had more poppy melodies than they knew what to do with, and just happened to perfectly arrange them into these 40 minutes on accident.
And the attitude! The band comes off kinda like cute innocent puppies playing around free of cares, but whenever you turn around and aren’t watching, they go back to smoking clove cigarettes and painstakingly orchestrating their spontaneity. In other words, they’re able to sound like they aren’t really trying, but I’ll be damned if that’s the case. The wordplay and references are too perfect. A few examples: from “Jellybones,” “Drove up in my bone caMARROW,” or, in “I Was Born a Unicorn,” “We’re the Unicorns, we’re more than horses; We’re the Unicorns and we’re people too.”
Anyway, I guess the reason I like this album so danged much is because, like most of my favorite albums, there’s more to it than just the music. There’s the mythos. There’s the band members writing gay slash fiction about themselves anonymously online. There’s figuring out how many songs on the album mention death (ten, if you’re being liberal about what constitutes “mentioning”). There’s the bizarre rap tie-ins (I could prolly write a whole paragraph about this, but I’m trying to RAP it up. Ha, get it? But yeah, basically, “Ready To Die” is both the name of the last song on Who Will Cut Our Hair and Biggie Smalls’ only non-posthumous album, and the first song on the first album of Nick Diamond’s post-Unicorns band, Islands, is subtitled “Life After Death,” which is the name of Biggie’s second, posthumous album. Whew.)
I guess what I’m getting at is that The Unicorns don’t just give you something to listen to, they give you something to obsess over. Hopefully this review is proof enough of that.

Favorite Tracks: Besides all of them as one cohesive whole, "Jellybones," "I Was Born a Unicorn," "Sea Ghost."

An Announcement

Bill sucks.

An Announcement

All "Bill's Hyperbolic Music Reviews" installments will henceforth be on a separate blogspot, appropriately titled Bill's Hyperbolic Music Reviews, and found at http://billshyperbolicmusicreviews.blogspot.com/.

Bill's Hyperbolic Music Reviews #13: Harvey Milk- Courtesy and Good Will Toward Men

Harvey Milk are the best fucking metal band on the planet. Though many asshole music critics desperate to pigeonhole even the most unclassifiable of bands have compared them to other "sludge metal" acts like the Melvins, who they kinda sound like sometimes, and Neurosis, who they don't resemble at all, the Milk are a singular entity unto themselves. After all, what other metal band could have performed a live set consisting solely of REM's Reckoning, and another comprised entirely of Hank Williams tunes, and also have released this utter mindfuck of a record? Well, alright, I'm sure the Melvins could have done so as well, but I promise you, Harvey Milk sounds as little like them as a band that falls under the same umbrella of genre classification possibly could. I mean, Meshuggah and Dream Theater are both ostensibly "prog-metal", but how often are those bands compared to one another, except to say, "Meshuggah sounds nothing like Dream Theater"?

Alright, poorly-structured rant over. Courtesy and Good Will Toward Men is, as I said earlier, an utter mindfuck of a record. It is a double album encompassing epic-in-both-scope-and-awesomeness sludge/post-metal, 16 RPM classic rock, avant-garde meanderings, a Leonard Cohen cover, percussion pieces (guitarist/vocalist Creston Spiers majored in percussion at the University of Georgia at Athens) and Swans-as-garage-band ballads, generally featuring Spiers' froggy howl/croon and massive guitar, Stephen Tanner's presumably-strung-with-bridge-cables bass, and Paul Trudeau's Neanderthal-mathematician drumming. The whole thing lasts over 70 minutes and you have to pay really close attention, but it's goddamn well worth it, you fucking ADHD baby. Get with the program and worship Harvey Milk, especially this album, their magnum opus as far as I can tell, or I will fucking find you (says the guy who's missing half their catalog, but I MEAN WHAT I SAY, FUCKER!!!)

Cameron's Record Reviews #2: The Devil and Death and Me by Run Forever

I would love to talk about how great this album is, but something ain’t quite right. It’s got plenty of the things I look for in a pop-punk record – catchy melodies, visceral lyrics, and the “bass-snare, basssnare” drum beat we’re all too familiar with. And while these things have been done a million times before, they still haven’t gotten (too) old; bands always seem to manage to keep punk rock interesting (at least if you’re an angsty teen who just wants to mosh and forget about your oppressive parents AND GOD DAMMIT MOM I DON’T WANT TO CLEAN MY DAMN ROOM).

So it’s not the simplicity of the record that’s off-putting. I’m tempted to say that there’s something insincere about it, but that’s definitely not it: The Devil and Death and Me has got sincerity in spades.

Take, for instance, the chorus to “A Sequence of Sad Events”: “A bad dream, this can’t be happening/I’ll wake up, and you’ll be there laughing/A brother, a best friend/A true love left with a loose end/A sequence of sad events that keep repeating/Over and over and over and over again.” It’s powerful, poppy as hell, and delivered perfectly. So why am I bitching?

It just seems like this sincerity is… manufactured. It’s almost like Run Forever looked at a bunch of other bands and said, “how can we sound as genuine as them?” The whole thing ends up coming off as not just derivative, but downright untruthful.

Now, I’m probably wrong about that. It’s very possible that whoever wrote these songs (probably the singer-guitarist dude, I can’t be bothered to look up a name) wrote them in a heated passion out of necessity, purging his emotions into music. But when the whole thing sounds like the Thermals trying desperately to write a Bright Eyes record (or something along those lines), I’m left feeling like The Devil and Death and Me isn’t really sincere, but just trying to be.

I guess that’s it. Run Forever makes some great tunes, but I can’t listen to it without hearing them try to be other bands. I’m still not entirely unconvinced that Conor Oberst didn’t write “When It Won’t Leave” before Run Forever added some hammer-ons and slides to the guitar part.

Now, I’ve been really harsh on this album so far. I don’t mean to be: besides this one (glaring) issue I have with it, The Devil and Death and Me is a wonderful record. It’s been in my car for the past few days and I’ve gotten a lot of kicks out of it, and I look forward to future releases. Let’s just hope that Run Forever can channel their songwriting talent into a sound they can call their own.

Favorite Tracks: “A Sequence of Sad Events,” “The Devil And Death And Me”

(As an aside: after writing this, I wanted to see what some other reviews thought of this album, and the first one that popped up started with the line, “Forever running from Conor Oberst substantial similarity lawsuits must be a tiring life…” One day I’ll be that clever.)

Bill's Hyperbolic Music Reviews #12- Cheer-Accident- No Ifs, Ands, Or Dogs

NOTE: Expect an even-more-subjective-than-usual review for this installment, as I am the biggest Cheer-Accident fanboy imaginable. I believe them to be the greatest progressive-rock band of all time, an opinion I share with approximately no one. Now that I've made that clear, onto the review.

Cheer-Accident are not a band to rest on their laurels. After more than twenty years of being a spastic math/noise/avant/comic-prog unit whose albums were distributed on micro-indies like Skin Graft and Pravda, they streamlined their approach into one of neo-Rock in Opposition, signed to Cuneiform Records, and released the most focused and critically acclaimed album they had ever made, Fear Draws Misfortune, which exposed them to a whole new audience. Pitchfork reviewed it, Cameron "I only like folk-punk and ska" LeViere tolerated it, and, had their new record mined identical territory, no one could have blamed them. But No Ifs, Ands, Or Dogs is not Fear Draws Misfortune 2: Fear Harder. It is not quite like anything they've ever done (though you couldn't mistake it for any other band), and it is, in my opinion, the best record they have ever made.

The album opens with "Drag You Down", which nearly disproves the point I made about No Ifs' uniqueness in their catalog in the last paragraph, because it sounds like it could have come off either of their prog-pop albums, The Why Album and What Sequel? However, I don't care, because "Drag You Down" is fantastic. The verse is a trademark inscrutable C-A groove (it sounds sort of like it's in 13, but I really don't have any idea), the chorus is catchy as hell, and, well, it fuckin' rocks. 'Nuff said. However, it is immediately bested by the sharp stylistic left turn that is "Trial of Error", which is one of the strangest songs I have ever heard by anyone. It opens with garish synths and multiple drum machines hammering out bizarre polyrhythms, gradually calms down into a muted verse featuring what I believe the lowest singing bandleader Thymme Jones has ever tracked, swells back up into a crazier version of the intro, and finally resolves with some dissonant piano stabs. I was left thinking, "What the fuck?" the first time I heard it, but I've truly grown to love it.

There are 15 tracks on this album, so I'm not going to bore you with a description of all of them. However, I will let you know that the first two songs are far from the only standouts. "This Is The New That", "Sleep", and the two-parter "Life In Pollyanna/Death By Pollyanna" are fantastically complex, utterly unique, and prog as FUCK. Elsewhere, "Barely Breathing" and "Cynical Girl" are terrific pop songs skewed slantways by bizarre arrangements and occasional RIO flirtations. Finally, scattered throughout this album are five or so interludes, some of which revisit themes from past C-A albums, and all of which are very cool and help greatly with the sequencing of what could have easily been a very schizophrenic record (like the band's earlier double album Enduring the American Dream, which, though great, is possibly the worst-flowing record I have ever heard).

If you are a pop fan, or hell, even a prog "fan" whose knowledge of the genre doesn't extend further than Yes, ELP, or Jethro Tull, I can't foresee you enjoying this album very much at all. If, however, you are at all an adventurous listener, you owe it to yourself to check No Ifs, Ands, Or Dogs out (as well as the rest of the C-A catalog). And, of course, if you are a Cheer-Accident fan, you should have this one by now (EDIT: I just realized this is "officially" released May 31st, so let me amend that to "you should have pre-ordered this one by now"). I never thought they'd top The Why Album or Introducing Lemon, but they have, man. They FUCKIN' have.

Bill's Hyperbolic Music Reviews #11- Yakuza- Transmutations

Since I've written a lot of metal and/or noise-rock reviews lately, I told myself that I wasn't going to do that for this installment, because these write-ups were always intended to showcase a broad range of genres, and I didn't want to get bogged down in reviewing any particular style.

Then I heard this album.

Yakuza is not your run-of-the-mill metal band, let's make that clear. Vocalist Bruce Lamont also plays a mean saxophone, showing off the band's clear jazz influences on many tracks. In addition, while so many tech-metal bands focus on machine-like precision and rapid-fire, jump-cutting changes, these guys take some cues from Eastern music and psychedelia and establish a slow-burning, drifting mood before eventually pummeling you into submission with odd-metered blastbeats and discordant riffs that, far from being robotic, splatter all over the place with madcap abandon, somewhat like Gorguts' incredible Obscura. Don't be misled by that comparison, though- Obscura had none of the hazy post-metal atmospherics somewhere between Om and Isis that are all over this rekkid (and most of the band's output, if the other two albums I've heard by these cats are any indication).

My only complaint about this album is that, because this band has such a signature sound, it starts to get a little formulaic near the ending of its hourlong running time. The songs don't diminish in quality, really- two of the last three songs are probably the best of the bunch- but Lamont's voice, though quite good (he's also in a Led Zeppelin cover band, after all) starts sketching out very similar patterns in the melodic parts (and it doesn't help that many of these sections are at very similar tempos) and the rave-ups start to feel a little calculated. This is honestly a pretty mild criticism, however. This album is an experience, and its two-track focus generally just helps that experience linger. Buy/steal the FUCK outta this thing, and enjoy. (Also, be sure to get their albums Way of the Dead and Samsara- WotD has a 43-minute song!!!)

Bill's Hyperbolic Music Reviews #10- The Melvins- Ozma

I always liked the idea of early Melvins- the alternating plodding and punky tempos, the constipated vocal caterwauling, the song structures that folded in on themselves in a fucked-up fractal of quirky time signatures, et al.- but, aside from loving the hell out of certain indisputably classic songs ("Eye Flys", for example), I never really got into their first few records to the extent I felt I should have.

That all changed today.

I put the group's sophomore effort Ozma on as I was raking leaves today, and, because raking leaves requires no mental effort whatsoever, I was able to devote more or less my full attention to the songs therein. What I discovered was, I had made a mistake in the way I had listened to this album and their other efforts from this era in the past- I had thrown them on while I was browsing forums and things like that, actions that took my focus away from the music and onto how much I disagreed with Pitchfork's new batch of reviews or whatever. The reason this was a mistake is because these songs are jam-fucking-packed with information. Most of them are really, really short (11 of the 17 are less than 2 minutes long) but there's about 500 different parts crammed into them, and the complexity is compounded by the fact that drummer Dale Crover plays a solid backbeat like 3 times in 35 minutes. So, of course, if you aren't listening closely, this stuff seems to get really samey, really fast. However, if you are, this shit's bananas. It's crazy how many killer riffs guitarist/mastermind Buzz Osborne throws out here, how utterly unique the songs are, how talented the players are, and how weird it is that Shirley Temple's daughter was the band's bassist at the time (well, OK, you don't have to listen closely to know that one) (also, I'm not kidding, look it up). I'll have to go through the catalogue again to see how this and their other early elpees now stack up to me against my old favorites like Lysol, Hostile Ambient Takeover, and (A) Senile Animal, but I have a feeling I'll be ratin' 'em much higher than I useta.

Some highlights include "Oven" (which I saw them perform live- it kicked ass! Also, Helmet later did a cover of it that was really good), "At A Crawl", "Let God Be Your Gardener", and "Ever Since My Accident". Also, they cover a Cars song, and (I think) a KISS song, but they just end up sounding like OK Melvins songs.

Bill's Hyperbolic Music Reviews #9: Helmet- Strap It On

Now that my sabbatical (read: period where I couldn't be arsed to write any new reviews because I suck) is officially over, I thought I'd get back in the swing of things with a review of one of my favorite albums of all time. This is not the review. Look below the --- for that.

-------

People often say that Meantime is the best Helmet album. Well, people also voted Rick Perry into an unprecedented third term as Governor of Texas, so maybe it's time to stop listening to those assholes, eh? (except me, because I'm right) Fact is, Strap It On is half an hour of Helmet at their noisy, grimy, 3-chord peak, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a fucking pansy whose copy of the Page Hamilton solo record Size Matters probably has cum stains all over the CD booklet.

Strap It On opens with some guitar skronk followed by a pounding 6/8 pattern that lets you know this band is not fucking around. The track this introduces, "Repetition", is full of Helmet's trademark syncopated, bone-crushing drop-D riffs, and is capped by a ferociously atonal Page Hamilton solo. So is every track on here. Helmet at this point was not concerned with variety, but rather with kicking your head in. Sure, they essentially had the same goal in mind on Meantime, but that record was made with a major-label budget and a slicked-up sound. Every snare hit on that album was a simulation created by the mixing engineer, for Chrissakes! There is none of that here. Half the time, you can't discern that the guitars are playing chords, because their tone is calculated for sheer volume and impact, and nothing but. The drum sound is full of industrial-esque gated reverb that makes each THWACK of the snare resonate through your skull, and the bass is like 50000 volts through your intestines. This is a record that is meant to be listened to LOUD.

The songs here are so focused on rhythm that some critics (and apparently former drummer John Stanier) have called Helmet's music math rock. I dunno about that- if a few quirky phrasings and the occasional 7 or 15-beat pattern makes you math rock, then Superunknown by Soundgarden is a math rock record too! What this really is, if anything, is proto-nu-metal, but before you send me angry letters for lumping Helmet in with Papa Roach or something, let me stress that this is free of the fake angst, rap-rock trappings, and lifeless production that current nu-metal is ruined by. But the focus on riffs over solos, shouts over vocal melodies, and white-funk drum patterns (though that does sell the killer drumming on this record short) certainly led to that atrocious brand of music, for better or for worse. Again, though, would fucking Linkin Park or whoever have done a song like the song that closes this record, "Murder"? Seriously, listen to this shit-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zPGtXnTjVk

I rest my case.