David Daniell and Douglas McCombs
Sycamore
(Thrill Jockey)


Douglas McCombs stands at the center of a minor musical epiphany in my life. Sometime when I was a teenager I learned that Douglas McCombs who played bass in Eleventh Dream Day—a band I adored primarily because they were both Makin’ Like a Rug and wanted to Bomb the Mars Hotel—was also Douglas McCombs who played bass in Tortoise—a band I was still pretending to understand while also trying really hard to understand them. So the small epiphany was this: music that sounds very different can originate from the same place, and actually, lots of ostensibly different kinds of music have more in common than one thinks. I know; I was a teenager.

And so to this collaboration between guitarist David Daniell and Douglas McCombs. It begins with simple, single notes, a little bit like the rain drops at the beginning of “Bambi”, but luckily not turning into “Silver Bells”: a feedback-drenched guitar eases into the middle of the mix after about a minute, and elegantly and luxuriously ringing chords and notes fold around it. Halfway through the track an acoustic guitar replaces the electric, louder, and with the supporting sounds gently receding. The second track, “Bursera”, follows a path built on a background hum and guitars, with sounds that are either ambient or sampled or electronic, through a grove of cymbals, rising to a cacophonous peak involving even more percussion, and extending for minute after minute after minute in a way that is somehow both controlled and chaotic. Wonderful.

“The Deshabille” would fit in on a Brokeback record, rich bass notes supported by spare percussion and what seems to be a faintly and infinitely ringing cymbal.

Presumably if you’re a fan of McCombs’s other work then you don’t need me to tell you to go out and buy this album; whether or not you’ve heard that stuff, you should go out and buy this album anyway. It’s an endlessly rewarding listen, which is pretty much true of everything I’ve ever heard that features Douglas McCombs. Yeah, I like him. And not just because we have the same first name.

The Fiery Furnaces
I’m Going Away”
(Thrill Jockey)


The title track opens this record with a stripped-down blues-stomp that clips along for two-and-a-half minutes of gradually evolving sounds—guitar and piano swapping back and forth with good effect. The follow-up, “Drive to Dallas” slows things down, and the blues gets the rhythm-and- prefix for a heartbreak lament until the halfway point, when it busts briefly into a frenzy before dropping back to the sadsack r-n-b, then gradually speeding back up to sprinting pace of the course of the final section.

The whole album plays around with blues and r and b idioms, and does so really successfully, thanks to spare and thoughtful instrumentation, lovely vocal work and absolutely dynamite songwriting. Even the shortest songs—five of them are under three-and-a-half minutes—marry several different musical ideas together, which makes them seem longer (in a good way) than they actually are.

“I’m Going Away” sounds curiously timeless; even after one listen—even after about five seconds of the opening track—this album sounds like an old friend. This quality comes from the combination of the sound and lyrics: little stories of heartbreak, and longing, Ray Bouvier and getting fucked up are told with a precision of language wrapped in a sound that both supports and gives space to the lyrical content. The whole album never seems to let a sense of fun and whimsy drop too far from view, either. Jason Loewenstein produced the record, and he’s done an excellent job of capturing the sound in a way that sounds crisp and casual.

I’d read quite a bit about The Fiery Furnaces over the past couple years without ever actually hearing any of their music; this album is definitely more than enough to send me diving headfirst into their back catalogue to see what other gems I’ve been missing. In the meantime, whether you’ve heard them before or not, this album is without question worth every bit of your time and attention.

Tortoise
Beacons of Ancestorship
(Thrill Jockey)


First of all, I have to mention that the press info that came with this album refers to Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence in its opening sentence. I’m not saying that’s good, or bad, I’m just pointing it out. I actually own a t-shirt with Harold Bloom’s picture on it. I also figure if I mention Harold Bloom a few more times, then people who google Harold Bloom might happen upon thephiller.com hoping to find out some literary stuff authored by Harold Bloom (come to think of it, a friend of mine has written a couple books for Harold Bloom’s series of introductions to various literary figures—that’s given me another opportunity to mention Harold Bloom) and realize they’ve stumbled on the most semi-literate music website the internet has to offer.

Anyway, to the music. The eight-and-a-half minute “High Class Slim Came Floatin’ In” opens “Beacons of Ancestorship” and sets the tone for what might very well be Tortoise’s best album. There’s a lot of synthesizer sounds, and along with the percussion, they create a vibe that’s more of a strut than a float, and for the first couple minutes you can just about sing the title along to the music, before everything takes a turn for the stacatto and stumbling, the song breaking itself into different, often overlapping pieces, then quieting down, then building back up into something altogether more guitar-bass-drum, straight-up rock, with a couple different keyboard sounds cycling back into the mix as the rock drives forward, then dissipates, and the waves of synthesizers collect on shore, and retreat.

From here on out, Tortoise spend the entire album doing what you’ve come to like them doing, which is to say, being Tortoise, and firing on all cylinders. “Prepare Your Coffin” could soundtrack a copshow from the 1970s, bright guitar lines and a medium-fast pace. Rock, soul, funk, marching band drumline, rattling bucketboy percussion, flamenco, electronica, hip-hop, and on and on: musical styles float in and out, play around in the sandbox with one another, but always building coherently structured songs, and a cohesive sound that develops over the course of the whole album.

I know that in response to the “may very well be Tortoise’s best album” Tortoise fans are going to say “What about Millions Now Living Will Never Die,” and I’ll respond and say, yeah, I know, I know, but this album gives it a run for its money.

Pontiak
Maker
(Thrill Jockey)


This album puzzled me the first time I listened to it, and I think now I know the reason why: I was listening to it on headphones on a train traveling underneath London, and the album was recorded in a 12’ x 12’ shack in rural Virginia. We weren’t even close to being on the same page.

“Maker” is crank-up-your-speakers-til-they-rattle music. The opener, “Laywayed”, sets the tone, buzzing guitar echoing a sorta bluesy but not quite riff against itself, against the drum, against the bass, back against itself again. It’s like the music is throwing itself against the walls of the tiny little studio. Actually, it’s probably not so much “like” that, but rather, it probably is that. “Wax Worship” uses longer, droning tones with both the instruments and the vocals to similar overlapping, up against the walls motherfuckers effect, whereas “Headless Conference” drops the vocals and spends just over a minute machinegunning your brains out.

One impressive aspect of this album is that Pontiak’s tone is always more or less the same, but no two songs sound alike: “Wild Knife Fight” is driven by a syncopated bassline and terrific interaction between the lead and backing vocals, “Heat Pleasure” is a minute and a half of cymbals with the stringed players taking the backup role (you know you want to hear it now), and “Aestival” slows down to a lilting, softer sound that seems to subtly ripple outwards until the ripples are slapping each other stupid. The title track clocks in at thirteen-plus minutes, never seems to do anything spectacular, and yet again, creates an intriguing piece of music through the nuances of the interactions between the instruments, before changing course and breaking out into a Zeppelinish riff at the halfway mark, then breaking that riff back down into something else as the song swaggers across the back half. Then on “Seminal Shining” these guys pull out the brushes and the acoustic guitars and a terrific vocal duet. “Honey” and “AASSTTEERR” strap the dirty guitars back on, and I suspect that the latter is two flowers intertwining. But not really.

Double Dagger
More
(Thrill Jockey)


The twin blades of the band name are percussionist Denny Bowen and bassist Bruce Willen, with Nolen Strals adding the vocal performance, and let me tell you, these guys know how to rock. If you’re the sort of dude (or dudette) who thinks you need a guitar to make proper noise and melody, then prepare to be wrong after listening to about ten seconds of the first track, “No Allies”.

Double Dagger play a slippery kind of punk rock that uses loud/soft, spare/overloaded, fast/slow to terrific effect. Nolen Strals is a vocalist of the Ian MacKaye variety: he doesn’t really sing so much as he speaks and he shouts; and he shouts without yelling, by which I mean, his voice is clear and loud and in control, and he enunciates, which is crucial in a band that creates its sound from precision drumming and equally precise—and elaborate—bass guitar. The vocal performances, in other words, aren’t an add-on, but a complement to the other musicians.

This is exciting music, and a song like “Camouflage” exemplifies all that makes it so: a slightly overextended count-in from the drums, a simple bass line, and then a small shift into a taut groove, lyrics that fool around with the context of the word “nothing”—all of this while drum, bass and vocal work in concert through subtle dynamic changes. At the halfway point, the bass and drum trade off some quick fills and the whole song accelerates and crescendos towards the end, before dropping to a spare and spacious conclusion.

But that’s just one three-and-a-half minute song, and “More” is an album that is, well, more (sorry) than a collection of songs. The ending of “Camouflage” provides transition into the beginning of “The Lie/The Truth”, which contrasts spare verses against its positively anthemic chorus, complete with melodic backing vocals. “Surrealist Composition with Your Face” is worthwhile for the title alone; the music backs it up. “Helicopter Lullaby” offers you the opportunity to fall asleep to a full-on chopper assault. And when “Two-Way Mirror” brings the album to its terrific end, you’ll be puking your guts out wanting more. Or if you’re like me, you’ll just start the whole thing over again from the beginning.

It’s tempting to call this record melodic punk-rock masquerading as hardcore, or to reverse that and call it hardcore masquerading as melodic punk. The truth lies somewhere else: this is an intelligent and outstanding and exciting amalgamation of everything that makes punk rock great, distilled through a bass, a drum and a microphone.

The band are also graphic designers, and therefore have a really good-looking website: http://www.posttypography.com/doubledagger/