BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE PRESENTS: KEVIN DREW
Spirit If…
(Arts & Crafts)
1/2
Its ungainliness aside, Spirit If…’s attribution—to
Broken Social Scene Presents: Kevin Drew—is telling. Like a
Canadian indie-rock take on KISS’s solo albums, Broken Social Scene
recently announced plans to focus the spotlight on the sprawling
collective’s individual players. First up is founding singer/guitarist
Kevin Drew. But the fact that Spirit If… isn’t credited
simply to Drew isn’t a calculated use of brand name; it’s an
acknowledgement of some very real contributions from other band
members. If you were to listen to this record blind, you’d more likely
hear a new Broken Social Scene record than a solo joint.
There are too many great songs among the album’s 14 tracks to single
them all out. Opener “Farewell to the Pressure Kids” explodes with
overdriven drums and drowned-out shouts, settles into a moaning ambient
interlude, and resolves into an acoustic whisper aided by horns and
woodwinds. “F—ked Up Kid” is an airy, gliding mope. “Frightening
Lives” is a drum machine–fueled drive pierced by distorted
guitars and keyboards. “Broke Me Up” and “Gang Bang Suicide” come
closest to sounding like solo ventures, but even these are abetted by
vocal harmonies and layers of instrumentation.
Considering Drew’s guiding influence on Broken Social Scene, and the
band’s involvement on Spirit If…, it’s no surprise this
“solo” album doesn’t radically diverge from their gorgeous, pacific
reveries and washed-out layers of sound. And, really, who would want it
to? Drew and his collaborators have developed a winning technique for
wrapping sweet vocals and smart, simple songwriting in yards and yards
of studio tape, splicing together subtle multitrack spaces and
symphonies out of disjointed recording sessions performed by an
ever-shifting number of musicians. Any given BSS song might contain a
dozen musicians or just one engineer, and Spirit If… has
that same impenetrable but inviting depth. ERIC GRANDY
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
Strawberry Jam
(Domino Records)
1/2
It was a roundabout transformation, but Animal Collective have
finally become the dance-music band they’ve always hinted at. The shift
is obvious from the first offbeat tone of
“Peacebone”—Strawberry Jam‘s disorientation is textbook
disco; the weirdness is all textural shock at the expense of freeform
structure. Those old bong-hit interludes and organic guitar swirls are
mostly gone, replaced with possessed synths. If there were guitar
hidden in these tracks, you’d never know it. Ironic then that Animal
Collective’s strangest palette of sounds should make for their poppiest
album yet.
Strawberry Jam doesn’t start with a slow build—it
drops straight into mania. Opening with Avey Tare’s raptor screech on
“Peacebone,” the band sound accelerated even when the tempo isn’t.
Chalk it up to the song’s relentless pulse, but Tare’s nervous frenzy
doesn’t hurt, either. Flipping between mystical weirdism and
upper-register strain, Tare’s vocal delivery borrows from Marc Bolan
and David Byrne, making him sound like an art-school version of
Shakira.
“Fireworks” is one of the few tracks that could have been at home on
Feels, if only because the sonics aren’t so strange. Epic and
contemplative, the song is a tribute to the Fourth of July, complete
with corporal snares and a marching choir. At almost seven minutes,
it’s too long to be a conventional pop song, but it sounds like one
anyway. It’s the prettiest thing on the album, the only spot aside from
“Cuckoo Cuckoo” where you can cleanly identify “real”
instrumentation.
Panda Bear closes out the album with “Derek,” a ’60s-era pastiche
full of “Leader of the Pack” drum heft and Beach Boys romanticism.
Shameless with its influences and structure, the bookend placement of
“Derek” is thoughtful—the final hint for everyone still confused.
For the last seven albums, Animal Collective’s pop moments, like
“Grass,” seemed like distractions from the band’s real goal.
Strawberry Jam suggests a new read: Perhaps the band’s
experimentation has been grasping for pop from the start. BRANDON
IVERS
Animal Collective play Neumo’s Fri Sept 14, with Wizard Prison
and Eric Copeland.
THE CAVE SINGERS
Invitation Songs
(Matador)
1/2
There’s more to the Cave Singers than three guys making music, and
whatever it is surpasses the old sum/parts cliché. These
Invitation Songs are sixth-sensual, precognitive. Minimal in
instrumentation and arrangement, the Cave Singers’ music is outside of
time, recalling hand-me-down hardships and sepia-toned mythology too
lived-in to belong to the memory of its makers or listeners. The
Seattle band—Derek Fudesco on guitar, Marty Lund on drums, and
singer Pete Quirk, all hailing from other, very different
projects—probably never attended a Prohibition-era Appalachian
wake or marched through Virginia in a Civil War drum line or called out
field hollers on a Louisiana plantation. Probably: Past lives may be
involved. Something spooky is going on here.
Each of these tunes carries a haunting melody or brain-burrowing
inflection that’s repeated over the song’s course—the line “I
must be lost this time,” croaked in Quirk’s bluesy, adenoidal rasp;
Fudesco’s three-chord guitar part on “Seeds of Night”; his simple
picking on “Royal Lawns”—but there are no hooks, per se.
Normally, music so linear would slip in and out of mind, but there’s an
accumulated grit and gravity that settles it, like campfire sing-alongs
or pre-gramophone work songs, into memory. Accents are used sparingly,
startlingly, for maximum effect—eerie trumpet, gothic piano,
faraway melodica. They’re not entirely acoustic, either: “Helen” flows
over cosmic, digitized syncopation; “Oh Christine” hums with synthy
drone; and the bass on “Called” is otherworldly.
The title Invitation Songs implies something yet to come, a
mystery awaiting revelation. The record dwells in the mystery rather
than the revelation, leaving the listener to figure out where exactly
it’s coming from and where it may be going. JONATHAN ZWICKEL
Block Party
Bumbershoot
Sasquatch!
Folklife