adnrewn

With the release of Black Sheep Wall’s sophomore album getting closer, I’ve been trying to find more. More Black Sheep Wall, more Admiral Angry, more bands that are loud and have a genuine investment in the sounds they are putting out. Something that resonates with me like Jument’s “Plate X” or Black Sheep Wall’s “I Am God Songs”.

Tiger Lily is something that might be doing just that. I say might, because I’ve been listening to their Annabeth EP on and off since I found it a few weeks ago, and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. Yet.

Stumbling across their sounds on YouTube whilst looking for live footage of the aforementioned bands, “Heaven/Plagues” started with a very placid choir. This set an uneasy tone. A good, good unsettling feeling. And then everything stopped. Two guitars came swelling against my ears and the soothing choir was replaced by a lulling, brooding cascade of chunks. I was reminded of Black Sheep Wall’s “Nihility” for a moment. A subdued group of howls bled through. “In heaven, everything is fine.”

The vocals in Tiger Lily are something I really, thoroughly enjoy. In contrast to the thick, warm sounds coming from the instruments, the vocals are thin and almost buried. Strained and sustaining when they need to, it’s a nice sound.

But something isn’t right. There’s cohesion and a good portion of this EP is memorable (the fever-picked guitar line in “The Devil” being something I find myself humming now and again), but then there are these parts that almost don’t seem genuine. There are these disconnected moments and the sincerity seems to take a back seat to breakdowns. The warmth and tone that was set at the offset is gone. These are brief moments, but they stuck out very sorely to me on my first listen.

At times, the songs flurry and things move very, fast. Gaza comes to mind, as does Backstabbers Inc. When this happens, I don’t feel removed. The songs progress to these moments very nicely and the vocals stretch out over guitars. The drums feel human and almost collapse for an instant, as if the songs aren’t meant to do this. But they do. They does. They am. It’s good.

My only real problem with this EP is the way it is mixed. The guitars are panned 100% in either direction. When they’re both playing thick, fat things together, it is wonderful. When the right guitar is playing an echoing, delayed mess of resonating notes, the left guitar seems so distant and I feel lopsided.

Keep doing things, Tiger Lily. My problems with the Annabeth EP are minor, really. They haven’t kept me from listening to it over and over the past few weeks. Just do more things. Keep doing more stuff with things and put out a full-length when you can.

Tumblr: http://tigerlilynoise.tumblr.com

Facebook: http://facebook.com/tigerlilynoise

I was going to do another “review” but I can’t stop listening to the album for long enough to have coherent thoughts about it and to be able to articulate those thoughts that aren’t just “It’s fuckin’ good.” So this one is short.

Book of Sand is a one-person, black metal project. The latest release is called “The Bees and the Butterflies”. It is 6 songs that are very rough, blistering versions of very old folk songs. It’s loud and fast for the most part. I don’t like black metal and I’m immensely impressed and inspired by this release. Each song starts off with a lone violin. Not only introducing the melody of the song, but immersing you in the atmosphere.The drums are all dead-center in the mix and add just enough support. The vocals are screeched and distorted and disgusting. They are buried by the guitars. Louder than everything else and really driving. You can just about hear every strum of each string. I’ve looked up some of the songs these are based off of and Book of Sand does a great job translating them to loud, harsh songs.

This is a very, very good album. I cannot praise it enough. Listen to it. And then again. And listen to “Arran Boat Song” over and over.

You can stream the whole thing and pay 5 USD to download it on bandcamp here: http://bookofsand.bandcamp.com/album/the-bees-and-the-butterflies

You can pay 6 USD and get one of 100 CDs with some great packaging here: http://www.mouthbreatherrecords.com/

There were 30 vinyls of this and they’re gone now.

When I first heard Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Silence, I could only articulate my thoughts into “THIS IS SO FUCKING GOOD.” Worship and Tribute took me years and years to get into. By the time I fell in love with it, Glassjaw was done. Dead. Gone. What was left was glassjaw.net and two bands I couldn’t give less of a fuck about.

Glassjaw released an EP this week called Coloring Book. It seems easy and lazy to draw lines between the “new” Glassjaw and any number of bands so I’ll try not to do that. These 6 songs are the matured and refined Glassjaw. The Our Color Green EP is much louder and closer to W&T. This new EP is something else. Not entirely foreign, but certainly made me raise an eyebrow at first.

Glassjaw isn’t a hardcore band. Or a post-hardcore band. Or a whatever band. Glassjaw, today, is 4 adults who make music. It’s occasionally loud, quiet, soft, rough and many other adjectives. What drew me to Glassjaw wasn’t the heaviness or the obviously emotional lyrics. It was the authenticity. That I was hearing talented musicians craft songs that I hadn’t heard before. There’s a film director analogy that can be made - how they don’t make genre-music, they just make music - but I’m a bit too full of tacos and sleepy to articulate that.

Daryl’s voice is so wonderful still. For the majority of this EP, he sings. Extremely well. The body that his voice has in “Gold” reminds me of Bjork. So full and rich. Kudos. Lyrics are much more subtle. It is still great to hear “It’s sexual debauchery, you fucking cunt” now and again, but Daryl matured for W&T and even more so now. Beck has paired his guitar with a keyboard now and it fits so well with these songs. Adding a whole new instrument sometimes feels forced, but these songs sound so great with it.

A lot of people are calling “Daytona White” the best song. I tend to find myself listening to “Stations of the New Cross” over the others. Daytona is a perfect way to end the EP, though. There’s not much more I can say. I don’t really want to spoil things. Or ruin things. Or make it sound like I’m calling it something it isn’t.

I’m really excited that Glassjaw is recording again. I cannot wait for whatever they do next. They are 4 men with a lot of talent and great song-writing ability. Well done, Glassjaw.

Here: http://www.mediafire.com/?bkfnzy945zlfkkt

There was once a band called As The Sun Sets. In the wake of them crashing and falling apart was Daughters. Daughters spent a lot of time on the thinnest strings of the guitar, mostly past the 9th fret.

A different approach was the other band to fall together from As The Sun Sets, Umbrella. Umbrella opened up and dug out the vibe of the earlier work that As The Sun Sets was. Maybe. Umbrella played a lot of shows with very deep growls and high screeches. They’re dead and gone. After two EP’s, we were given High Horse. They were moshy and good and had very very good vocals. They too disappeared and all that was left was Daughters. Every-fucking-where.

Recently, the last throes of, in my opinion, the better parts of As The Sun Sets formed Zombifying Venom. Still from the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Zombifying Venom is very fast. Much more introspection and care went into these songs, I think. It reminds me of Umbrella in that sense. Whereas the latter parts of As The Sun Sets felt very rushed and unfinished, Umbrella and Zombifying Venom have a polish. They took time to craft songs instead of just kinda suggesting notes in an order.

They have an air to them. The slower parts have more effect when they aren’t the same in every song. They progress and fall apart into a fun sway of chords and slow drumming. Umbrella had this, too. But they seemed more focused on getting young adults to swing their fists and feet around. Zombifying Venom has this ability to make me think that “Forever” should end EXACTLY the way it does.

Five songs and a year of shows and they’re kinda sorta maybe dead now. Rumors and hints of a revival. This is progression, though. Members of As The Sun Sets will keep kicking around and making fast/slow/loud music. They’ll forever be compared to As The Sun Sets. Looking back now, you can kind of see a rift in the music. Two ends of the punk spectrum. I’ll stick with the non-Daughters side.

Here: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Y2NT31MK

Mare is a word for a horse. Mare was also a band. Jument is a French word for mare. So when I tell you that Jument is a band, I hope you can see a not-so-subtle line between them.

Mare started out as two guys playing very slow and quiet and loud. Very smooth vocals and very rough vocals. Their only EP has become a benchmark for bands I listen to. Whether I intend to compare them or not, Mare is always somewhere on the radar when I listen to things of that nature.

I found Jument. An album or EP called Plate X with a diagram of male genitalia. It was louder than loud. Starts and stops and very odd rhythms. “Digital Artery” had me sold on the whole release from 20 seconds in. It was smooth and rough and loud and slow and fast.

The vocals are also very rough. Very smooth at the same time, though. Where Mare had murmured clean vocals, Jument has growls that wind up and dither out. Had I not read along, I wouldn’t know that the only lyrics to the song “K” is a single word. Beg. Though, I’m sure this isn’t 100% accurate.

So Jument has a lot of odd guitar chords and very, very talented drumming. Now without vocals, there are three very original songwriters at work.

Here: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=T8OXZD9L

Mare: http://myspace.com/maremaremare

I don’t listen to a lot of new music. Just recently, I found myself listening to Nine Inch Nails’ “The Slip” for the first time. Partly due to the fact that I don’t read record reviews of new releases. I suppose I just let my curiosity get to me and I’ll give something a shot. So it’s safe to say that I’ll absorb most of this year’s albums in the next few years or so. There is one album that I think everyone should listen to. Everyone.

“The Fool” by Warpaint

I’ve listened to this through and through more times than I can remember. Warpaint’s been kicking around for years now and I’ve heard all the demos. Maybe. I was ecstatic when I first saw the song list and read “Set Your Arms Down”. The embryo of that song has been kicking around my hard drive for a long long while now and to hear a studio version was melting.

This album doesn’t “wow” you. There aren’t soaring guitar solos and none of the songs are particularly hard to, eventually, play yourself. It will creep around for a while and you’ll be humming Emily Kokal’s vocal lines while eating lunch. I find myself swaying to the snare-driven beat in “Shadows” every time. It’s like I forget it’s coming and I’m so glad to hear it.

It’s four girls playing, mostly, slow rock and singing with very simple and honest intentions. Last year, their “Exquisite Corpse” EP stayed in my Winamp playlist for months and “The Fool” seems to be following the same trend.

Here: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=18SD5GEP