[rating=3.50] After replacing their drummer and bassist numerous times, releasing multiple tracks on some compilations and scattering a handful of singles around Europe, the Paris-based band Parlor Snakes have finally
Glitchy, techy, not too upbeat but not too down… this is a great album. It pulls together quality elements of the likes of Dntel and Royksopp while retaining a distinct enough sound to be interesting. Listening to it, one feels both comforted by its familiarity and yet uncertain of quite where it’s going next.
Chickenfoot III is a hint that the band is skipping through the second chapter, but if a quad level wants to be reached successfully, the collective might need to further define the musical mesh.
It is highly unlikely the Fab Four considered the possibility of infusing Abbey Road with the rhythms of Jamaica when they recorded the landmark album at the end of their career in 1969. It takes a lot of gusto for a young band of white musicians from the east coast of America, named Yellow Dubmarine no less, to attempt a full-fledged reggae reinterpretation of an album long considered one of the greatest records of all time and a pinnacle of the LP format.
Carefully selected by archivist David Lemieux from various tour stops on the Grateful Dead’s first trip abroad, this package is deliberately conceived as a companion piece to the original Europe ’72. As such, Volume 2 functions brilliantly as a complement to that seminal inclusion in the Grateful Dead discography.
Tripper has more of a narrative focus than previous Fruit Bats efforts. On his fifth album, Eric D. Johnson consciously shifts to story-based songs. While he leans more toward the storyteller brand of songwriter, though, he steps away from the sunny folk pop that is most identified with Fruit Bats releases.
Alex Schaaf recorded his debut album, The Mistress, alone in his Wisconsin bedroom. Under the moniker Yellow Ostrich, Schaaf’s music has the intimate feeling of poetry reverberating off the four walls of his confined space. The minimalist song structures use instruments to fill in gaps in the open-ended tracks. An occasional thud of a kick drum or piano chord have a jarring effect, seeming out of place with the flowing vocal melodies, but it is those vocals that provide the meat of the album.
While they could continue to deliver solid sets of songs constructed in their conventional paradigm, their willingness to experiment and travel in new directions with their latest record– and do so successfully– both reinvigorates their catalogue and shows that they still have plenty to say, and it’s worth listening in.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience Winterland single CD, just released by Legacy Recordings through its affiliation with Experience Hendrix, is not the same music as originally put out through RykoDisc in 1987. It is, instead, a distillation of the four CD deluxe package available the same day as this new release, which is, in turn, a condensed representation of recordings made over three nights in October of 1968 at the now defunct San Francisco venue once overseen by the late impresario extraordinaire Bill Graham.
The sweet closing tracks are punctuated by the crowning final minute of “Held My Head,” a gorgeous blending of instrumentation. Throughout the album, precise musicianship, appealing song-craft and intertwining waves of melancholy and joy create a balanced collection of ten songs, an excellent early-morning album to accompany the rising sun.
