Critics' Circle

Exploring the dustbin of last month's musical history

By Ben Mercer, Jason Ng and Alexander Provan

We Indy editors are handsome men. Handsome men with impressive record collections. Which is what makes listening to most of the records sent to the Indy offices so extraordinarily painful. It's almost as if record companies are trying to numb us, so that we can no longer tell the difference between good and bad records, turning trees into effusive press releases that sometimes exceed 30 pages. We are lonely, but not desperate.

And yet, still, we feel compelled to give many of these records-whether "reminiscent of Ben Folds," "in the tradition of Leonard Cohen," or simply "Yaz-tastic"-a cursory listen and then write about them with an air of expertise and discretion. And yet, to our chagrin, some gems fall through our hands (and onto our CD cases). This is a space for mourning, for eulogizing, and for remembering.

Benjamin Mercer: I always like to start things out with medium-length cock staring me in the face. How long is this? (Referring to the erect penis on the back cover of Thighpaulsandra's Double Vulgar II.) I think it's about six or seven inches.

Alexander Provan: Yeah, apparently he plays guitar in Spiritualized. According to Beta-Lactam Ring (Thighpaulsandra's record label), this is "obviously the most psychedelic record ever."

Jason Ng: I would say it's the "worst most psychedelic record ever."

(Incomprehensible filtered synth doodling and kraut-inspired pagan jams abruptly end. Ben turns on the new Dead Meadow record, Feathers.)

A: I listened to this while I was falling asleep a week ago, but I was too stoned to remember what it sounded like. Extensive wah, very sludgy.. Kind of sounds like Incredible String Band slowed down and played through every distortion and reverb pedal ever made. Are these Robert Johnson or Tool riffs?

B: They had this weird mythology thing going on with their last record. Maybe they've made a Nietzschean shift from a band governed by myth to one governed by logos. Right now, they're totally Apollonian.

J: Take it further!

B: If a swamp had a sound, if it steamed music, this would be it.

A: Hey Ben, why don't you take another gander at Thighpaulsandra's throbbing member.

(Jason puts on The Decembrists' new record, Picaresque, then quickly takes it off, repressing the urge to vomit. He replaces it with the Skygreen Leopards' Life and & Love in Sparrow's Meadow.)

B: (Does his best fey hipster bird call yodel.) This is nature, but with way more 'boingy' noises.

J: I definitely think this could be Sesame Street's house band.on really good acid.

A: Listen. The Skygreen Leopards are a folk-based, pagan-inspired, freedom-loving, improvisatory gem rooted in the traditions of Eastern European traditional music while maintaining the childish naiveté of fellow travelers Animal Collective and Devendra Banhart.

J: It definitely sounds like there are more than two people in this band. [There aren't. -Ed]

A: That's because the squirrels are playing percussion. Maybe that's the difference between the two breeds of psychedelic music we've been inundated with over the last few years. Bands like this take cues from early Tyrannosaurus Rex and live in a primitivist dream world, recovering or simulating some pre-modern sensibility-spirit animals serve mushroom tea to sitar-playing white boys from Jersey. Bands like Dead Meadow would rather cop new pedals and line their post-industrial fallout shelters with empty cans of High Life, listen to stoner metal and order ethnic instruments on eBay.

B: I bought a sitar last week!

(The chorus sings "Shut the fuck up, Ben!" The first track from Keith Fullerton Whitman and Greg Davis's Yearlong comes to life.)

J: This was all recorded live. I don't know if I can see myself sitting on the ground of a club for this.

A: Yeah, well, you're not white. You're into beats. You don't understand abstraction. I can definitely see myself on the ground for this. The tension in these pieces is what marks them as different from more facile material being constantly spewed forth from the same computer music scene-Davis' last record, Somnia, bordered on that territory, offering a few too many extended 'shimmering drones.' But this is refreshingly unsettling, not just easy listening for post-minimalist neo-hippies with PowerBooks.

B: Yeah, this is more fragmented, but it makes the moments of cohesion more powerful. (Still holding Thighpaulsandra album cover in his hand.)

J: I would expect to hear this in an art installation. There's a lot of empty space.I imagine someone walking around interacting with these sounds.Oh hey, look, a hip-hop record. I love beats. I understand hip-hop culture.

(Ben cues up Boom Bip's Blue Eyed in the Red Room)

A: It's interesting that the first hip-hop record we've listened to is also the most ambient, with the most purposeful composition and sonic diversity. It's also totally devoid of soul. Did he make this using a spreadsheet?

B: Yeah, this is the apotheosis of pathos-ridden emo hip-hop for dudes who grew up with Chucks and a tech fetish. Very white.

J: If you sped this up, you could definitely play this at a discotheque. It's a little New Order, a little Kraftwerk, a little M83-synth strings all over. Each four measures one element of the song changes and/or a new synth bank is introduced. Is this organic trance?

A: This reminds me of coming down after getting stoned on cough syrup.

B: You should stop doing recreational drugs and try steroids (see page 16).

(Alex scoffs, flexes, and puts on these Old Hat reissues: Violin, Sing The Blues For Me, later followed by Folks, He Sure Do Pull Some Bow!)

J: I know folk music is supposed to be cool and all, but these screechy violins are giving me a headache. And it doesn't even sound like it's from Brooklyn.

B: These are fiddles, but Jason makes a good point. I mean, if Michael Gira produced this, he didn't do as good a job as he did with Devendra Banhart.

A: Um, these aren't white guys in dresses with beards and faux-mystical philosophies. This is fiddle music from the 1920s and '30s. Early, rare blues.

J: I guess that explains why it sounds so authentic. These performances are incredible-really raw recordings, obviously, but there's something intriguing about the contrast between the familiarity with which these songs are played and how strange they now sound. Wait a second, these CDs were reissued in 1999 and 2001, respectively.

A: We've been had!

B: This is still the longest we've listened to anything so far. Let's rejoice, not despair.

(Jason puts on the new Sole record Live From Rome, new from Anticon)

A: This guy reminds me of Snow. "Informer, blah blah blah blah blah. A licky boom-boom down!"

J: Ah, the spoken-word breakdown. (Skips to "Atheist Jihad"). This is the worst most "politically relevant" hip-hop track I've ever heard. These rhymes are off the unintentional hilarity scale: "Will you cry when Bambi comes back with a dynamite belt and a gun in his mouth?"

B: This is aural terrorism.

(Puts on Sightings' Arrived in Gold, released by Providence's Load Records.)

J: This build-up on the first track is so damn long. I'm like a kid the night before Christmas, just itching to open his new shotgun.. (The noise hits.) This is aural terrorism of a much better variety.

A: Comprehensive discography of the most recent Load releases? Ultralyd's Chromosome Gun is on of the most challenging records Load has put out-challenging to the label, I mean. Load has such a distinct output, and while this falls into the noise category, it's really free jazz with noise as an additional element.

B: These guys are definitely from Norway, though. There is little harmony to be found, though the dissonance isn't generally of the painful variety, except for the skronky no-wave paroxysms.

J: I think we're all in agreement. The only valid cultural forms are hip-hop and Lightning Bolt.

Ben Mercer B'07, Jason Ng B'06 and Alexander Provan B'05 dig the Circle Jerks

Take Me Out

Music in Providence this week

By Alex Provan

Friday, March 18
AS220
115 Empire Street
9pm, $7
Pleasurehorse
Criterion
Les Trolls
The Wind Up Bird
Decades

Global computer-enabled mashup! Pleasurehorse has acted the part of the bull at the helm of Providence's most seaworthy vessels-Landing, Six Finger Sattelite, Fort Thunder-since 1992. Lately, he's taken that controlled chaos and spontaneity to interactive computer environments. Les Trolls, from France, and Criterion, a part of Brooklyn's Broklyn Beats collective, bringing a savory multi-course meal of turntablism and convoluted electronic music, tearing down boundaries between zeroes and ones. The Wind Up Bird is Joe Grimm, singing and cooing and drawing gigantic storm clouds on a computer, bringing it all down gently and ending things with a wet kiss. Decades is stuck in 1971, the greatest year in rock music, and can often be heard from Washington Street, roasting rhythms on a spittle and then baking that shit until it's golden brown

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