Natural Snow Buildings

The Centauri Agent

[Vulpiano; 2010]

Links: Natural Snow Buildings | Vulpiano | Download album for free

Posted by Brendan Fitzgerald on 11 June 2010

Natural Snow Buildings is Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte, whose latest double LP The Centauri Agent showcases an impressive shift in approach to genre that makes this release their best since 2004′s The Dance of the Moon & Sun. Clocking in at just under an hour and a half, this record is certainly a behemoth by casual standards. But at no point throughout it’s lengthy entirety do your senses feel overwhelmed. In fact, the album is shorter than some of their past releases, which does gives it an advantage in accessibility. Likewise, The Centauri Agent‘s length has allowed the band to place its musical talents in a more focused and concrete environment. Last year’s The Shadow Kingdom, while generally praised, fell victim to a thematic discontinuity, almost making it appear like a hodgepodge of tracks which floated around one another but never connected as a whole. The Centauri Agent resolves this issue by stepping outside of the pysch-folk schtick the band’s work has been cornered into lately, allowing them the opportunity to develop a sound that is uniquely their own.

As the title and cover art perhaps suggest, avoiding the realm of clichéd cosmic terminology to describe the sound of this record was a trial in itself – so bear with me here. Disc one opens with the sprawling 41-minute epic “Our Man from Centauri” which serves as a wonderful outline for the extraterrestrial landscape of the record. The track wavers off into “The Accidental Remote Viewer” before dissipating into infinite space. The combination and placement of these two tracks ingeniously unravels a transcendent journey from the fringes of Earth’s atmosphere towards that of the heavens. This odyssey is continued further on disc two with “Stuttering Probe” and “The Storm of Resurrection.” Surprisingly, the record boasts fewer folk-oriented songs than on previous efforts. Even tracks that retain some of those lyrical and acoustical elements succumb to a surrounding sonic blanket. The appropriately titled “Black Holes” mixes the two genres in a manner that leaves the listener with the impression that something both beautiful and destructive has taken place. “Memories found in a bill from a small animal vet” finally finds a Natural Snow Buildings album coming full-circle with a closing mediation on a minute physical remnant before the track decomposes into a silent emptiness.

It is these sort of subtle developments that make this release so defining for the French-duo. The Centauri Agent arrives at just the right moment in what has been one of the most consistently improving discographies in recent memory. In today’s musical environment where innovation and musical maturity are hard-pressed towards artists and their subsequent releases, Natural Snow Buildings’ evolution has never seemed contrived or forced. Excuse the pun, but their ability to naturally hone their craft since their 1999 full-blown drone debut Tracks on the Bloody Snow has enabled the two to become a bastion for how delicately such musical talent should be treated. It is fair to say that Ameziane and Gularte appear to ebb and flow between the elements they are comfortable with, but these styles have never combined so well as they have on The Centauri Agent. Feel free to call such an alternating routine somewhat self-indulgent, but this album reminds us of why truly independent music is so important and refreshing.

85%

The Jesus Lizard

Head / Goat / Liar / Down
[Deluxe Editions]

[Touch and Go; 2009]

Links: The Jesus Lizard | Touch and Go | Purchase on Insound

Posted by Brendan Fitzgerald on 18 November 2009

There has lately been a swath of records that have received the remaster treatment in the last year or so. From the undeniably deserved undertaking of The Beatles’ catalogue and The Stone Roses’ self-titled debut to the simply gratifying here-you-go of Nirvana’s Bleach, audiophiles alike have plenty to keep themselves busy with before the New Year rolls around. The Jesus Lizard reissues fall somewhere in between these two categories. I have to admit that when Touch and Go first announced the re-releasing of the band’s first four albums to coincide with their reunion, I was a bit puzzled. These records are less than 20 years old. It’s a grateful gesture, sure, but such an undertaking didn’t really seem to be a necessity. And the oft-taken path of “cleaning up the sound” just doesn’t seem to connect with the nature of the band’s output.

So it’s a good thing that their original producer Steve Albini personally helmed the remasters alongside Bob Weston of Shellac, known for his spectacular job on Sebadoh’s Bubble and Scrape. Albini is one of those few producers that actually takes his job seriously. And both of these guys have shown quite well just how vigilant they are with handling the band’s material. If any of you fans are expecting (or for that matter, fearing) a completely different sound, you shouldn’t. The overall production is a little cleaner, the drums are turned up a bit, and on certain tracks you can even make some sense out of David Yow’s vocals upon first listen. But for the most part, Albini and Weston have left things untouched. Likely their biggest contribution on these remasters is the carefully-chosen bonus material selected from live performances, singles, EPs, and unreleased demos.

Head is not as widely acclaimed as their later records, but it deserves a good nod nonetheless. “One Evening” is a great opening tune, introducing the listener to the explosive rhythm section that develops more fully on Goat. The pacing is still quirky, since the album kind of dozes off in the middle but then suddenly kicks up towards the end with the intense “Killer Mchann.” The Pure EP (also available on the first reissue) is present along with some great live tracks, including one of “Bloody Mary,” which makes this debut worth your time alone.

Then we have Goat. This is the band in full force. Yow’s already-mutilated voice assumes the howl of a startled horse being buried alive. He chortles and croaks his way through “Seasick” and shrieks like a mad street preacher on “Monkey Trick.” His tantrums on the amusingly titled “Then Comes Dudley” and “Lady Shoes” materialize comfortably alongside the chugging bass of David Wm. Sims and Mac McNeilly’s spot-on drum work. But the real winner here is Duane Denison. His methodically constructed guitar riffs perfectly compliment Yow’s belligerent outbursts on “Karpis.” Their interlocking melodies sound like a married couple on the verge of a violent and ugly divorce.

Liar is more or less an extension of the band’s ever-increasing full-frontal attitude found on Goat. The album is truly terrifying and exemplifies the band at its lyrical and musical tipping point. “Rope,” a song about a man being tied up and left for dead, breaks into some sort of deformed rockabilly riff, leaning towards a punk attitude that places itself suitably beside Stick Men With Ray Guns material. In “The Art of Self-Defense,” Sims’ bass unleashes an artillery barrage over the entire track, a refreshing change in musical direction from Denison’s usually dominant guitar. And on “Puss,” Yow pleads in a congested gurgle, “Get me something to stop the bleeding / ’cause I’m fittin’ to blow.” I guess we were a bit too late.

Down has often been referred to as a creative 180 spin for the band, and for that reason alone it has often received more lukewarm praise than their previous efforts. But nothing has significantly changed musically on this album. Denison’s heavy guitar lines still viscerally creep up and down each track – save for the absurd and unnecessary “Low Rider” – and Sims and McNeilly keep the rhythmic pace pretty steady when allowed. What really transforms (and suffers) on this album is Yow’s voice. It sounds inundated with exhaustion. It’s fairly apparent on the opener, “Fly on the Wall,” in which he more or less eschews the aggressiveness of the music. Yow still yelps and screams, but that recognizable anger of his found on Goat and Liar isn’t really present. Overall, it almost appears he was deliberately put in the backseat for this record.

Even though they faced a bit of a critical jab with Down, it’s irrefutable that The Jesus Lizard are one of the key bands that exemplified the ’90s underground noise-rock movement, only aided further by their uncompromising creativity. The least these remasters can give fans is a renewed sense of appreciation for how quickly the group developed musically in such a short period of time – all four albums were all released within five years of each other – and more importantly how Albini’s unhinged DIY attitude allowed for that to happen. As for newcomers to their music, they offer a more focused point of introduction. I have to admit, if Touch and Go thought the time was now to reissue these records, they at least did it right.

Head / Goat / Liar / Down

76% / 93% / 90% / 65%

Richard Hawley

Truelove’s Gutter

[Mute; 2009]

Links: Richard Hawley | Mute | Purchase on Insound

Posted by Brendan Fitzgerald on 09 November 2009

Richard Hawley recently revealed to the BBC that his latest album, Truelove’s Gutter, exhibits a much gloomier mood than his previous efforts, focusing on “darker periods” in his unusually turbulent life. Such a statement should come as no surprise for die-hard fans of his output. Since his 2001 self-titled solo-debut, Hawley has regularly employed a somber and melancholic atmosphere when penning a song while inversely injecting them with endearingly romantic chamber-pop melodies. This approach has often given his most saddening songs a feeling of hopeful optimism; a sense that even when walking down the rain-soaked streets of his native Sheffield long before dawn, Hawley can still lift his head and see the stars shining above.

But the lush orchestration found on 2005’s Coles Corner and 2007’s Lady’s Bridge has been almost entirely abandoned on Truelove’s Gutter. Instead, Hawley pushes his listeners to contemplate his already heavy-handed lyrical style accompanied primarily by guitar and relatively few arrangements. As a result, his songs do not leave much room for passionate anticipation.

That isn’t to say Hawley doesn’t begin the record without some sort of tender and positive buoyancy. On the album’s opener, “As The Dawn Breaks,” he affectionately strums the guitar while singing: In this morning search for meaning / I hear a songbird’s melody / I hear a songbird’s melody / And she’s singing just for me. For Hawley, it is perhaps a hint towards a new beginning, a renewal that manifests itself within the object of his affection.

This sentiment is continued on the second track, “Open Up Your Door,” but completely disappears by the third, “Ashes on the Fire.” He sings “My words like an arrow / Aimed so much higher / My bow broke asunder / Ashes on the fire” with a frank repentance evocative of Johnny Cash’s mid-career spoken word style. The lyrics signify a change in mood, a transition from hope to despair, which sets itself firmly within the context of the remaining songs.

Hawley might express some resolve on later tracks such as “For Your Lover Give Some Time,” promising his significant other he will “drink a little less” and give her “flowers from the graveyard now and then”. But its wavering existence is diminished by Hawley’s cynical pessimism on the closing number, “Don’t You Cry,” in which he eerily chimes “Your lover’s ghostly memory / Haunts you all your days / His ship sails bold horizons / You stalk him in its wake / But you can’t cry,” leaving himself removed and despondent from his own sense of loss while providing the listener with a feeling of aching uncertainty.

Despite being one of the greatest strengths of the record, the careful and calculated confessing technique Hawley uses is ultimately the factor that will also divide listeners. With two tracks around 10-minutes in length, some will understandably find it too long-winded. And things don’t really begin to kick in until mid-way through, which causes the second half of the record to lose some of its momentum. But ultimately these complaints don’t seem to necessarily weaken the themes he is attempting to express in Truelove’s Gutter. If anything, they might even signify a new chapter in Hawley’s artistic maturation and self-confidence that has been evolving quite strongly since Cole’s Corner.

74%