Schooner
Duck Kee Sessions


Schooner has released “Duck Kee Sessions” on cytunes.org, which means it’s download-only, but when you download it, the proceeds of your $5 goes to cancer research.

This charitable aspect presents you with the perfect opportunity to discover Schooner if you’re not aware of them already: it’s only five bucks, and it’s a charitable donation, so if you end up not liking the album, it’s a tax write-off anyway.

But if you don’t like Schooner, then there’s something wrong with you, friend. Their album, “Hold on too Tight” was one of the best things I heard in all 2007, and it still gets regular rotation at my house. This release, a 16-minute E.P., has a slightly less-polished sound to “Hold on too Tight”, without losing any of the quality. Schooner’s strength is blending country and pop influences into beautifully constructed songs. So on the opening track here, “Feel Better”, and you get a surf-inflected country stomp, you get a little mariachi inflection on “Fortuition”. The songs always seem to be hovering over a meeting of Rick Nelson, Brian Wilson and John Lennon. But again: these are influences used by a band that exudes an authentic originality, not the direct pinpoints of some derivative songwriting and playing. This is a band with brains: they are lyrically smart without being smartass, and when it comes to instrumentation the songs don’t rest on a couple guitars and drums and bass; piano comes and goes, “Duck Kee Nights” is an instrumental tack piano (I think) piece with the sounds of the crickets and the highway as a rhythm section, some ukulele helps you “Lose Yourself”, and across these songs there are various percussion and other instruments lending subtle and effective underpinning to the fabric. There’s also much to be said for the vocal arrangements: harmonies and backing vocals are consistently beautiful and/or dynamic (witness the woo-oo-oos on the opener, or the ba-ba-ahs that course through the final track, “In All Probability”).

When I reviewed “Hold on too Tight” a few years ago, I said you should be prepared to make Schooner your new favorite band. I don’t want to repeat myself, so this time I’ll just say go to cytunes.org and buy this album. It’s worth way more than the five bucks it’ll cost you, and the money’s going to a good cause. Once you’ve done that, then go and buy “Hold on too Tight” so you can support this outstanding band, too.

Organos
The Limbs EP
(Pox World Empire)


Maria Albani, bassist in the wonderful North Carolina band Schooner, is the brains behind Organos. This E.P. is a little box of wonder. Spoons, handclaps, guitar, snare drum, tubs, whoknowswhatelse are all being played in various places to make short (7 songs in just over 12 minutes) and tuneful songs. Some of these tracks trip along lightly, others are slower and more intense. They’re all atmospheric (in other words, they press their mood onto you), and they leave you wanting them to keep going. To that last extent, it’s a bit like listening to a sober and more serious minded (and more female) Robert Pollard; the hook catches you, keeps you, and then drops you and you feel a bit weightless for a moment. Nothing wrong with that!

Javelin
Javelin
(Thrill Jockey)


Javelin is two cousins and a lot of samples, and it will give some idea of what’s happening here if I repeat the part of their press material that notes they’ve played a gig in the children’s branch of the Olneyville Public Library in Rhode Island. If you have children and Javelin perform a show near you, and you don’t take them, you will be arrested; it’s abuse, dude, not to let your kids get jiggy to this stuff. If you don’t have children, then you should take your nephew or niece or neighbor or grandkids or whatever. If you hate children, then you can go just to make yourself happy.

This is a short little record of five songs and sixteen minutes, and allow me to list the titles: “Lindsey Brohan”, “Unforgettable Super Lady”, “Soda Popinski”, “Radio”, “Twice”. You could buy this limited editon 12” record for the song titles alone. Sometimes it’s a little hip-hoppish, sometimes it’s a little soulish, or funkish, or latinish. It’s always a whole bunch of fun (no –ish).

People who don’t smile listening to this music need to check for a heartbeat; the beats and melodies jab at the corners of your mouth and push them upwards. “Soda Popinksi” is a little gem of genius that begins and ends with a little kid telling a rhyme about George Washington and works that little kid’s voice into a goofy mmmmmmmm while the rest of the song doodley-doos and soda popinskis.

The best thing about this short little record is that it manages to be joyful and fun and interesting and utterly devoid of cynicism without being obnoxiously saccharine or twee. You can dance to it, you can sit and head-bob to it, you can take your kids to the library to hear it performed.

You’d better go and buy “Javelin”, because one day you’re going to find yourself having gotten up on the wrong side of the bed, and you’re going to put this album on, and you’re going to feel better. And if that isn’t enough for you, well, it should be.

They’re releasing another 12” on Thrill Jockey next year, and a full length album on Luaka Bop sometime thereafter, and I suggest you keep your ears open for them. Hooray!

Pontiak
Sea Voids
(Thrill Jockey)


In my review of their album Maker earlier this year I pointed out that listening on headphones on an underground train had befuddled me on first listen, but that once I’d thrown it on using real speakers I’d found an earsplitting hunk of wonder.

Good news, everybody!

They’ve done it again. This album is less of a sea and more of an ocean, from the big and deep and slow and menacing blues stomp that gives into altogether more swaggery one at the opening, to the dripping guitar chords that roll into one another across most of the other tracks, and including the little islands of acoustic-guitar that pop up a couple times. There are nine tracks in just over half an hour of music here, but the album has such a coherence and intensity of sound that listening to it seems epic—in a good way. An engine of tight, steady drumming punctuates the whole album. Pontiak have found a way to energize psychedelic/stoner rock without—as I said in the last review of their music—ever seeming to do anything spectacular. Which is a kind of spectacularness itself.

OOIOO
Armonico Hewa
(Thrill Jockey)


The first twenty seconds of this album will send your dog barking and howling for the point of your home furthest from your stereo. I guess that makes your dog “SOL”, as the title and my weak joke would have it.

What follows is much more pleasant to the ear: an entire album of lilting percussion, precise, yet sauntering guitar, and hoo-ing, ha-ing, yelping, wailing and alternately soothing vocals, grooving bass, and keyboards doing various things as well. Sometimes these things happen all together, sometimes they happen in smaller combos. It’s all pretty wonderful. OOIOO pretend they’re a rock band, pretend they’re a pop outfit, pretend they’re avant-garde artiness. And yet, they’re never really quite any of these things, but never really quite not any of these things. It’s not easy to wrap pop and rock and soul and and and and and and into one accessible sound, and still to make it intriguing, and still to make it fun. But OOIOO seem to have found a magic formula. Except it isn’t formulaic; far from it. This album is a little journey through all points musical: funk, soul, high life, all the pops and rocks I’ve already mentioned, and more and more and more. And yet the journey isn’t just slapdash globetrotting or island hopping; this is OOIOO’s sixth album, and these women take their listener by the hand, whether to lead, to dance or to celebrate, and in listening, you always feel the strength and comfort of that guiding hand as one idea leads to the next, as one song gives way to another, from the aforementioned “SOL” to the “Honki Ponki” that finishes the album.