THE THIEVES OF KAILUA
The Thieves of Kailua
(Mill Pond)
Jason Holstrom is a man of many hats. Most notably he’s a guitarist
for local party-positive dance band U.S.E, and he’s one-fourth of
electronic pop band Wonderful. But he’s always juggling a number of
other smaller projects at any given time, including the Thieves of
Kailua, his Hawaiian-inspired solo project, whose self-titled debut is
a 14-track postcard from a man who may live in Seattle but whose heart
belongs to the beach.
Taking cues from his other sonically saturated projects, Holstrom’s
Thieves of Kailua features many layers of instrumentation
(ukulele, slide guitar, horns), vocals (mostly Holstrom’s multitracked
into harmonies, but also some from his wife, Angela), and field
recordings (birds, the ocean, rain, etc.).
The songs are laid-back, with melodic nods to the Beach Boys (of
course), and the whole vibe is warm and loving. It’s like a honeymoon
on a beach, and in fact many of the songs are sung to or about his
wife.
It’s a cute record, and it’s fun to listen to while picnicking in
the park on a sunny afternoon. But I can’t help but find it a little
goofy when Holstrom, a fair-skinned Seattleite, exaggerates an accent
to sing, “Me travel left to right/Me see a lot of sight/Me fly around
the world/Me meet a lot of girl” or when he alters his voice to sound
like a choir of harmonizing tropical birds on “Under Setting Sun.”
I have no doubt the record is made with sincerity, despite the few
moments of possibly unintentional silliness. But if Wonderful and U.S.E
are Disneyland’s Electrical Parade, the Thieves of Kailua are its Tiki
Room. MEGAN SELING
The Thieves of Kailua play an album-release show Thurs Aug 9 at
Chop Suey.
TALIB KWELI
Ear Drum
(Blacksmith Music/Warner Brothers)
1/2
Talib Kweli’s first words on Ear Drum are total
cliché: “They say you can’t please everybody.” Frustrating but
excusable—in Kweli’s case, he’s struggled admirably to do exactly
that throughout his career. The opening song’s title is also pat but
appropriate. It’s called “Everything Man.”
That’s the contradiction at the heart of the Kweli
experience—he knows that he can’t be all things to all people,
though it’s not for lack of trying (remember his 2004 near-hit “I
Try”?). Is the disconnect his fault, or is it hiphop’s?
Like Guru, Kweli is the intelligent MC that every head respects but
isn’t bumping in the dunk. He scratched the mainstream with the
aforementioned Kanye-produced, Mary J–cameoed hit, but he hasn’t
risen to the creative peak he hit years ago with Black Star and
Reflection Eternal.
Ear Drum comes close, but owing to its roster of 20 or so
producers and guests, it’s wildly inconsistent. Big-swinging bangers
like “NY Weather Report” and “Hostile Gospel Pt. 1” are softened by
several half-finished vignettes and half-speed, half-hearted ballads
only partially rescued by Madlib’s lazy, stoned-out beats.
The only number that totally nails the slow-swing vibe is “In the
Mood,” a brilliant Harlem Nights doo-wop make-out session
between producer and guest MC Kanye West and Kweli, who steps up his
game immensely in Kanye’s presence. The song is classy, clever, and
like so much that West touches, feels timeless.
That’s the midpoint and the highpoint; the front-loaded album
settles for smoothed-out soul denouement that guest shots by Norah
Jones and Justin Timberlake do nothing to shake. Buried toward the end,
lead single “Listen!!!” hits hard musically, but Kweli’s tired
true-school diatribe falls flat; it’s followed by a Meters-sampling,
uncredited ensemble monster jam “Go with Us,” a worthy sneak attack.
But it’s too late: We’ve already taken Kweli and his opening platitude
too close to heart. JONATHAN ZWICKEL
Talib Kweli plays with Common Market, Wed Aug 15 at the
Showbox.
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Total 8
(Kompakt)
1/2
Coming up with a singular style and honing it till it can be
recognized from 100 yards is a good way to become noticed. Adhering to
that style and altering it in only the most incremental of ways for a
solid decade is a good way to be forgotten. So why do people still love
Kompakt so much? The Cologne, Germany, techno label’s longevity is down
to a number of factors—the rise of minimal in club-music
popularity, the smart way it’s positioned itself as a major center of
the European dance community as a distributor and vinyl shop as well as
a maker of records. But what’s most remarkable is the way the label has
been able to stay current while staying resolutely Kompakt.
If it weren’t for the number in the title, Total
8—the third of Kompakt’s annual compilation series to
contain two CDs—might seem like a freshly energetic new label’s
opening salvo. Tobias Thomas and Michael Mayer’s “Ueber Wiesen”
resembles the beginning of Orbital’s “Chime”—compare the bass
lines—bent and stretched to build continuously for seven minutes
without ever entirely peaking; its languorous surge ends only when the
track does. Joerg Burger’s “Polyform 1” layers a bubbling computer
melody and string-pad mist that calls to mind early Warp Records
chill-out, only prodded by the beat into a delicately liquid groove.
And Broke’s “Coladancer” spends eight minutes worrying its crunchy
little 303 squiggle, echoed human grunts, clomping snares, and
twittering keyboards into something that spins odd shapes from old
Chicago acid. None of it sounds exactly alike, and all of it sounds
like Kompakt. MICHAELANGELO MATOS
FOG
Ditherer
(Lex Records)
The road to Ditherer has been a long, strange one for Fog.
Chief audio architect Andrew Broder has moved from the sloppy turntable
experiments of his self-titled debut through the subtle, lo-fi sound
collages of Ether Teeth and the deconstructed folk and beat
poetry of 10th Avenue Freakout to finally emerge
as—classic rock?! Well, sort of. Broder’s music has always been
like an echo of forms—what began as a pale, Midwestern reflection
of instrumental hiphop production began to give off the lingering
impression of folk, and this latest album veers into basement-level
reverberations of acid-fried ’70s rock.
For Ditherer, Fog—which consist of Broder as well as
Mark Erickson and Tim Glenn—are joined by the likes of Phil
Elverum of Mount Eerie, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker of Low, and
Jonathan and Josiah Wolf of Why?, among others. Fog fold these
like-minded masters of lo-fi and mellow into their sound
seamlessly—one never feels torn from the album by an out-of-place
guest vocal.
“Inflatable Ape, pt 3” is a kind of mythic, absurd Fog origin story
(“Once upon a moderate Father’s Day/they shoved a microphone inside
me”) that rides a blown-out bass into a sharp, bending guitar riff.
“What Gives?” hallucinates shady Radiohead atmospheres, over which
someone spits insider/outsider sneers like, “You encourage flaccid
rap/what part of the game is that?” “You Did What You Thought”
alternates between mournful balladry and singsong parade marching,
culminating with a stadium-sized guitar solo. The title track scans
from odd electronic funk to AM harmonies to muted Black Sabbath vocals
about Satan and rising again. “Your Beef Is Mine” and “What’s Up
Freaks?” are both slightly Southern-tinted, postmodern ramblers.
Run through his personal echo chamber, Broder’s
influences—whether hiphop or folk or heavy metal—become
obscured and enveloped, faintly familiar but unmistakably Fog. ERIC
GRANDY
Endeavor
Discovery
Columbia
Challenger
