Month: November 2017

Desert Liminal’s “Static Thick” is a Low-Key Gem

In the sea of anonymous releases on Bandcamp, the dream is always to find a legitimately great band that you never would have heard of otherwise. It rarely happens, because there is such a saturation of music writing and critics/bloggers are eager to jump on anything that might appeal to more than five people, but sometimes a band like Desert Liminal slips through the cracks. Their recent release, Static Thick, is among my favorite albums (cassettes?) of 2017, even though it hasn’t reached many listeners.

But that’s enough reveling in obscurity. I listened to a lot of music this year, and Static Thick stood out because it has such a distinct vibe, a lot of which comes from Sarah Jane Quillin’s vocals. She has a husky voice (think Fiona Apple and Cat Power range) and sings with a bit of a drawl that adds to the disorienting, blurry nature of her songs, which explore gray areas sonically and thematically. She plays keys with various effects while Rob Logan handles drums, and the sound is about as minimalist and lo-fi as you would expect from a duo with a self-released Bandcamp record. Sometimes these bands I find on Bandcamp can sound like they’re missing something, or are still working out the kinks, but I wouldn’t change a thing about Desert Liminal’s sound, which is full and rich despite the minimal set-up.

I’m always curious to see how bands describe their sound, especially if it resists easy categorization like this one, and Desert Liminal’s are particularly entertaining: “dreamed up sike rok for high-functioning depressives” and “30 yr old woman falls in love with distortion pedals.” Both strike me as fairly accurate. The pedals and Quillin’s vocals do give the music a hazy, dreamy vibe, and the music is naturally downbeat, almost to the point of being narcotic. This fits with Quillin’s lyrics, which are gloomy and ambiguous like great poetry. There are clear themes of loss and grief, like on “Sun Limina,” but a lot of it is left open for interpretation.

The band I kept thinking of while listening to Desert Limina was another Chicago duo I was obsessed with recently: Algebra Suicide, which had a similar duo approach and a focus on dark poetry backed by minimalist music. That band was a little more lyrically driven than Desert Liminal, and had talking instead of singing, but they both create moody and powerful songs with very simple parts. And also like that band, part of why I like Static Thick is that it’s a welcome respite from overproduced music that sounds too eager to please as many listeners as possible. This is smart, challenging music that packs surprising potency in its low-key presentation.

 

Widowspeak Use Nostalgia to Their Advantage on “Expect the Best”

It’s easy to overlook a band like Widowspeak, who have been around for a few years while making music that is all within a very specific lane of hazy country/shoegaze/grunge (they call themselves “cowboy grunge”). None of that changes on their newest album, Expect the Best, but it still represents a subtle progression for the band and is their most confident and self-assured release yet. It’s one of those breakthroughs that is unlikely to be widely recognized as one, similar to how I felt about Beach House’s Thank Your Lucky Stars album back in 2015.

Widowspeak’s calling card has always been singer Molly Hamilton, who has had one of the best voices in music since their self-titled debut in 2011. She only really sings one way, but it’s perfect for this dreamy style of music, and her voice inherently captures the feelings of nostalgia and longing that fit a band that (for better or worse) has a very 90s aesthetic. While mostly sounding the same, Hamilton makes some subtle shifts on this album that help make Expect the Best feel different and better than Widowspeak’s previous efforts. Her voice is more a part of the music than it has been before, and it’s aided by her lyrics, which are the most direct and relatable she has written.

The gorgeous opener, “The Dream,” sets the tone for the rest of the album, with Hamilton waiting in line, thinking about leaving town and going west (likely mirroring real-life for the band, who moved from New York to Tacoma back to New York). “Isn’t that the dream?” she wonders in the chorus, and the rest of Expect the Best asks similar questions about the choices we make and the inertia we sometimes have to overcome to make them. “When I Tried” is the most direct song in this regard, as Hamilton confronts feelings of malaise in what might be the most straight-forward rock song the band has recorded. Her lyric “why am I still like this” speaks to any self-loathing slacker.

Hamilton repeats lyrics a lot on Expect the Best, which is another clever way of portraying inertia in the music. The most striking example is on the album closer, “Fly on the Wall,” where she repeats the phrase “it was nothing” for minutes until Robert Earl Thomas’ guitar builds and drowns her out. The song is about a go-nowhere relationship, and the repetition gets across the idea of doing the same thing over and over while hoping the situation will change. On “When I Tried,” the repetition of the phrase “you can try all the time” at the end feels more like a pep talk to herself, but it’s unclear if it will be effective.

A lot of bands use nostalgia in a cynical way by trying to transfer your love of older music onto themselves without bringing anything new to the table. I’m sure Widowspeak have been accused of that also, but I think this band uses nostalgia in a purposeful way that actually adds to the richness of their music. The retro, dreamy sound automatically has the feeling of looking back and wondering what could have been, which plays into Hamilton’s lyrics about encountering forks on the road in life and not being sure if you chose the right one. So even if Expect the Best sounds familiar, the depth and quality of these songs makes it feel new.

“Masseduction” is the Sound of Assimilation

Let’s start with this: Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent) is a ludicrously talented artist. She can rip on the guitar, she writes songs that are simultaneously catchy and weird, and she’s extremely charismatic as a singer. She has always struck me as an artist who could basically make whatever kind of music she wants because she has so much talent and versatility.

So part of why her newest album, Masseduction, disappoints me is because I keep thinking about what could have been. Clark’s prodigious gifts make her a potentially singular artist, but on this album she seems content to sound like everyone else. While previous albums by her like Actor (which I think is her best work) were whimsical and had contrasts in her guitar-playing and indie pop stylings, Masseduction sounds more like a generic pop album that covers really tired subject matter — I’m not sure if you’re all aware of this, but apparently Los Angeles is a sleazy place with lots of drugs, sex, and plastic surgery.

This doesn’t hurt as much as it could because I saw it coming when Clark became famous (by my definition, which is that people are interested in who you date) and enlisted in-demand producer Jack Antonoff (aka That Guy From Fun) for the album. That Guy From Fun has cashed in on America’s desire for schmaltzy pop with obvious lyrics, and while I can’t pretend to know how much he influenced the songs on this album, I’m more than comfortable blaming him for some aspects. He has a co-writer credit on “Pills,” which has lyrics that are about as subtle as a burlap sack full of hammers, and I also sense his grubby paws on the back half of the album, which is full of sappy ballads from the Fun playbook.

In general, the lack of subtlety on the album is what bothers me — the themes all feel obvious and done before, and the music itself sounds more like a big pop production than an individual statement that showcases Clark’s talents. That said, this album has some good moments, because Clark is too talented to make completely worthless music. “Los Ageless” has been certified as a jam by the jam-certification committee (of which I’m a member), “Slow Disco” is a nice ballad even if it sounds a bit out of place on the album, and “Young Lover” sounds like a classic St. Vincent track with a sweet chorus that is undercut by some distorted guitar.

Still, even with those high points, my ultimate takeaway with this album is that it feels like a five-star chef who is working at a Chili’s. The music on Masseduction just isn’t befitting of an artist with this much ability, and at times it sounds complacent, like she is coasting through the songs. St. Vincent doesn’t owe us anything, and it’s hard to begrudge an artist for making a pop album to get her art to more fans  — in fact, one of my lingering inner conflicts over this album is that I’m glad more casual listeners will discover this artist who is legitimately talented and weird, and not of the traditional pop music mold. So maybe I’m just selfish for wanting something that was weirder, more subtle, and more like the St. Vincent whose music I’ve loved for years instead of this slick pop album.