White Hills blast big psychedelic blues-rock that expands and expands and expands and expands, surfing the ever-rippling and rising wake of the silver machine, cresting up over Monster Magnet and rolling up into a tsunami, seven songs, sixty minutes, sprawling guitar riffs and treading bass, drumbeats collecting fill after fill upon fill and fill, one wave of song ebbing only long enough for the next to crash down upon it. Plus, on “Let the Right One In”, church bells. Listen loud.

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Release Date: January 26, 2010

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!

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.

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.

The Fiery Furnaces – Even in the Rain from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

High Places – I Was Born from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

OOIOO
“OOIAH”
from Armonico Hewa
(Thrill Jockey Records)

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What he has created from this ostensibly simple starting point is a work of no small wonder. These four songs are essentially pop songs, stretched to the aching point, slowed down so that the listener can enjoy almost every single aspect individually, while also enjoying every single aspect simultaneously. This album is a hymn to sound, and a hymn to the possibilities of sounds, and a hymn to the beauty of sound, and a hymn to the joy of music. The second song on this album, “Let There Be Love”, takes two one-second samples of the Bee Gee’s song of that title and works them into a sonic response to the appeal that the title makes, and in so doing becomes one of the most breathtaking and beautiful pieces of music I’ve listened to in a very long time. It’s ten minutes, and worth the price of the album on its own. And yet, “Let There Be Love” is surrounded by music equally thrilling, equally beautiful, equally wonderful. A thesaurus of synonyms for beautiful and wonderful will only begin to tell you what you are missing if you don’t find forty-five minutes of your life to devote to this masterpiece.