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.

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

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

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

Buy at iTunes
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Jason Urick
Husbands
(Thrill Jockey)


Jason Urick recorded a lot of the sounds for this album using the microphone on his laptop, then shaped them into the four songs that comprise this full-length album.

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.