The Answer Is In The Beat

Church Chords: elvis, he was Schlager LP (Otherly Love, 2024)

February 25, 2024 at 6:15 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

This amazingly titled LP, masterminded by Stephen Buono, has a long list of guest artists, including Nels Cline, Genevieve Artadi, Jeff Parker, and Takako Minekawa. Elliott Bergman (NOMO, Wild Belle) played on and co-wrote the Tropicalia-influenced “Renda”, sung in Portuguese by Artadi. “Apophatic Melismatic” is more of a bubbly cosmic disco excursion, and is mostly instrumental. The album gets a little jazzier after that, and Jeff Parker delivers a bewildering solo on “Warriors of Playtime”. “She Lays on a Leaf” sounds heavily Krautrock-influenced and has Stereolab-like vocals, but comes out much differently than that band’s interpretation of the style, sounding more surreal and aggressive. “Owned by Lust” is a punkish, paranoid rant, and “Then Awake” is a lush, slinky psychedelic pop gem featuring Minekawa. The manipulated robo-vocals on “I Hope You See” make the futuristic R&B track feel like an outlier on an album that already doesn’t conform to one style, dreaming up a combination of sounds from several different places and eras.

Longmont Potion Castle: Best Before ’24 (D.U. Records, 2024)

February 18, 2024 at 4:21 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Right off the bat, this one starts with an LPC all-timer. “Post-A Cappella” is yet another example of LPC coming up with a ridiculously catchy song idea and asking every record store he can find if they have it in stock. A few years ago it was “flip child, buck wild”, now it’s “boo boo dickit”. He thinks it might be by Burt Flickit, or maybe Robert Cure of the Smiths. And it’s a blackened jug band track, or maybe indie klezmer. Anyway, I want to find a maxi-single of this too, I’m sure it’s out there somewhere. Other than that, well, there’s still a lot of Joe Sour like on the other recent LPC albums. At this point, you kind of get the feeling that literally any time anyone calls him, for any reason, he probably starts yelling “you’re a motherfucking chicken shit criminal!!!” at them. And in the past, when LPC silently connected him to a police office, he seemed to hush up and be respectful of authority. Now he’s yelling at cops just as much as anyone else, which makes him unexpectedly punk. Later on, his sampled voice calling someone a “chicken shit prostitute” gets turned into the hook of one of the album’s musical themes. “Energy Star” is another great “LPC confounding someone by spouting out ridiculous jargon” call, as he keeps getting picture-in-picture on his TV and the volume keeps changing as he’s trying to fix the contrast or change the channels. “Star People” is a “who are you voting for?” survey, and absolutely nobody seems interested in any specific candidate, except for the one guy who wants to vote for the Good Lord. Also, at the very moment “you want me to come down and get nimble with you?” is challenging “do you have any videos of people just beating each other?” as one of my favorite LPC one-liners. Also, the part when he acts for an outlandish sort of body art, and the person he’s calling talks about how people have requested even more outlandish and violent things, and he actually seems a bit startled. The last track is a 10-minute medley of thematically unconnected calls, but they all escalate in absurdity. The album title implies that LPC is falling off this year, but rest assured, that is not the case at all.