SPARE RIB & THE BLUEGRASS SAUCE
Mountain Air Waves
(Self-released)
Strangercrombie Auction Winner
According to Wikipedia.org (user
generated, sure, but still probably very accurate in this case),
bluegrass music started sometime in the 1940s—”sometime after
World War II, but no earlier.” The genre has had decades and no less
than three “waves” to shift and morph, yet most modern bluegrass
maintains a classic, string-heavy, harmonious sound; it is, perhaps,
one of the purest genres in modern music (read: boys with bad haircuts
and styled-to-death outfits have not turned it into watered-down
drivel).
For example, local group Spare Rib & the Bluegrass Sauce’s
Mountain Air Waves, an album of original material and one
wonderfully odd cover of Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” Even
though it’s 2008, the quintet—Sean “Rib” Horst, Hunter
Hendrickson, Emmitt Prichard, Alice Boytz, and John
Brown—delightfully capture all the same vibrancy that made their
finger-pluckin’ forefathers classic.
The percussionless sound is familiar, but Spare Rib & Co. do it
well—playful layers of fiddle, banjo, and mandolin are heightened
by memorable choruses that burst with three-, four-, even five-person
harmonies.
And as for that Guns N’ Roses cover, well, there are fiddles instead
of guitars, straw hats instead of do-rags, and denim overalls instead
of leather pants. I can honestly say I’ve never heard anything like it,
and I mean that as the highest compliment.
MEGAN SELING
Spare Rib & the Bluegrass Sauce play Sat Jan 26 at the Foggy
Goggle Bar at Stevens Pass, 6 pm. Visit their website at www.myspace.com/bbqgrass.
THE HELIO SEQUENCE
Keep Your Eyes Ahead
(Sub Pop)
I read somewhere a long time ago that the dudes from Portland duo
the Helio Sequence, Brandon Summers and Benjamin Weikel, worked at a
guitar shop, and that makes a lot of sense. The Helio Sequence always
seemed like guitar-store-employee rock—music that placed
technical craftsmanship and pedal-board clutter above pedestrian
concerns like, say, catchy songwriting. Their albums were consistently
shimmering, psychedelic, and sonically impressive but not all that
memorable.
Which makes Keep Your Eyes Ahead a major breakthrough for
the band.
Opener “Lately” has the soaring, starry chorus of a late-period U2
song, but in a good way. The ragged, rapid-fire vocals and doubled
melodies of “Can’t Say No” are instantly catchy. “The Captive Mind,”
“Back to This,” and “Hallelujah” all recall the more shining moments of
Modest Mouse (a band Weikel has done time in), with their wounded pop
cadences and spare, subtly layered instrumentation—the hushed
verse of “The Captive Mind” pretty specifically cribs a melody from
“Gravity Rides Everything.” The title track is alternately haunting and
driving, delicately propulsive verses giving rise to aerial choruses.
Bob Dylan’s influence is noticeable, though not distractingly so, on
weary ballad “Broken Afternoon.”
The story behind the album is that vocalist Summers destroyed his
voice during six months of touring in support of the Helio Sequence’s
Sub Pop debut, Love and Distance. Summers was mute for days at
a time, ordered by his doctor not to sing for two months, and worried
that he’d never sing again. He passed the time reading a lot of books,
including Dylan’s Chronicles. He eventually started a serious
regime of vocal exercises and regained his voice.
The result of Summers’s ordeal is the band’s best album yet. The
careful production touches and rigorous musicianship are still here,
but they’re in the service of the catchiest batch of songs the Helio
Sequence have yet to produce. ERIC GRANDY
WHITE WILLIAMS
Smoke
(Tigerbeat6)
Given that White Williams comes up from under the wings of Girl Talk
and Dan Deacon, and records for Kid606’s Tigerbeat6 label, you might
reasonably expect some toy-electronic seizures or mischievous sample
fucking from the man born Joe Williams. But on debut album
Smoke, Williams proves to be a subtler brand of joker than his
references would suggest. In fact, his one great gag is a kind of cool,
detached take on late-’70s electric glam funk—smooth, little
laptop reductions of Bowie or Bolan.
But while Smoke is playfully stoned, it’s not entirely a
goof. “Headlines” may be full of spinning-newspaper non sequiturs and
its chorus echoed by a comically detuned baritone, but it also rides a
convincing groove. “In the Club” is heavy on the pastiche, but it also
has an undeniable sway and charisma. “New Violence” is a politely
pogoing new-wave workout. The title track is an odd funk gem, full of
wobbly, staggering bass, silky synth flutes, and evenly exhaled
vocals.
There are no obviously sampled hooks here, but Williams’s affected
vocals and deftly laid-back arrangements make sneaky references
throughout. And two tracks register as more firmly tongue in cheek: the
rote, druggy cover of “I Want Candy” and the ring-modulated,
sample-and-hold outro “Lice in the Rainbow,” in which Williams finally
lets his circuit-bent, inner Dan Deacon out.
Held up to his putative peers, White Williams is practically easy
listening. But for anyone unfamiliar with his buddies, Smoke is just unusual pop from an unlikely source, hazy but vaguely familiar.
ERIC GRANDY
White Williams plays Thurs Jan 24 at Club Pop at Chop
Suey, 9 pm, $8/$10, 18+. With Health, Check Minus, DJ David
Wolf.
K-Y
Vaseline
Spit
Sand
