With Endurance Like The Liberty Bell: A Guide To Guided By Voices, Part 2 (1992-1996)

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Propeller (1992)

This was supposed to be the last album. Having spent five years playing to handfuls of people, selling albums in the hundreds, and getting into debt, they released *Propeller* in a pressing run of 500 copies, each of which bore a unique cover hand-crafted by the band, their friends, and family members. These albums would circulate and gain the band a larger following, which would snowball in each subsequent year from then on. *Propeller* is the beginning of a stellar period of extremely fertile creativity for what is considered the band’s classic lineup, featuring the band’s only other real songwriter, Tobin Sprout. It’s the first album to really exemplify the “GBV sound”, which combined basement recording with tight, heavy guitar work juxtaposed with lighter-than-air songcraft. The initial “GBV! GBV!” crowd chant at the beginning (fake, of course – the band had never played in front of that many people) would be replicated at every show thereafter, and the sledgehammer that many of the songs wield make it feel like the biggest arena show you’ve ever heard through the living room wall.

Standouts:

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Vampire On Titus (1993)

A very abrasive album recorded after Pollard decided to keep going with GBV but before he re-solidified the classic lineup. It’s a notoriously noisy album that will prove to be a difficult listen for casual fans, but it’s fuzzed-up, blissed-out tracks will yield their secrets for the patient. “”Wished I Was A Giant”” sounds like a bootleg of the greatest arena performance ever recorded from the roof of the stadium. “Marchers In Orange” proves that there’s melody even in the midst of layered tape hiss. Not their most accessible album (maybe their least accessible, in fact) but fascinating nonetheless.

Standouts:

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Bee Thousand (1994)

This was supposed to be the last album. After catching some interest with *Propeller* and *Vampire On Titus*, the band was still in debt and Pollard was facing demands to focus on his family and his teaching career. The band threw together *Bee Thousand* in a very informal, very spur-of-the-moment fashion. The album caught the ear of the thriving indie rock underground and word of the band spread. They began receiving notice in large publications and people actually began to show up to their shows. As a result, Matador Records (who had handled the distribution of *Bee Thousand* through the small Scat label) offered to sign them and they became critical darlings. *Bee Thousand* is one of the most well-regarded albums of the last thirty years and regularly makes the cut when it comes to the listing games music critics like to play. The secret is of course in the songwriting; the album feels like a cut-and-paste collage of the best moments of what Pollard calls the “four Ps of rock”: Pop, punk, progressive, and psychedelic. In the vein of that last genre, the album is absolutely chock-full of strange, noisy moments; during the recoring, the band members used tape manipulation, edits, and noise effects as instrumentation, resulting in what often seems like the aural equivalent of DaVinci’s sketchbook.

Standouts:

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Alien Lanes (1995)

Their first album for Matador was a continuation of the style they had really hammered out on *Bee Thousand*: short, sweet bursts of songwriting gold with a ridiculously high percentage of catchy winners. The percentage is perhaps not as high as *Bee Thousand*, but *Alien Lanes* also out-numbers the previous album, 28 tracks to 20. The seconds-long sketch-tracks can be a bit useless at times (especially “Gold Hick”) but they do provide valuable contrast to the longer tracks, making the album feel like you’re flipping through a particulary fertile stretch of radio dial.

Standouts:

Under The Bushes Under The Stars (1996)

For their ninth album, the band decided to go the professional route again, something they hadn’t attempted in a decade. They recorded a number of sessions on 24-track, and enlisted several producers, including Pixies bassist Kim Deal and noise-auteur Steve Albini. The result is an album studded with solid nuggets of pure pop framed in punchy rock ‘n’ roll. The art-collage sensibility is largely done away with, in favour of well-executed songs that, in a just world, would have been hits on rock radio. As it was, it would be the last album the classic lineup would record for sixteen years. Tobin Sprout left the band to puruse being a father, and the rest of the regular players drifted away.

Standouts:

With Endurance Like The Liberty Bell: A Guide To Guided By Voices, Part 1 (1986-1990)

Guided By Voices are less a band than they are a collected catalog of songs by the inhumanly prolific Robert Pollard and whatever band members/drinking buddies he had hanging around him at the time. Springing directly from the blue-collar surroundings of Dayton, Ohio, they provided an outlet for the creative tendencies typically stifled in practical factory towns and an excuse to get drunk and play loud rock ‘n’ roll to very small bar crowds. Inspired by college rock and the early pop masterpieces of the British Invasion, they have spun out a sprawling career of hard-worn rock ‘n’ roll and have come to define the lo-fi aesthetic that underwrote much of American indie rock in the 1990s. To properly outline everything they’ve ever recorded would take a lifetime, and if you finished you would find that Pollard would have outdistanced you by no mean distance; it is only a half-joke that by the time you finish this sentence he will have written six more songs (In fact they’ve released two full albums since I first posted this to Reddit seven months ago). In addition to what’s included in this guide, there are myriad EPs, singles, live albums, compilations, split-EPs with other bands, Robert Pollard solo albums (13 or so), Boston Spaceships albums, and the *Suitcase* series of albums, that dig up 300 toss-off songs and pretend they’re done by 300 one-off garage rock bands. It’s daunting, to say the least, which is why for now this guide will focus mainly on their GBV-branded ‘studio’ albums. Pack a lunch and find some (a lot) of beer; we may be here for a while.

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Forever Since Breakfast (1986)

★★☆

Released 1986 on I Wanna Records

While this is technically an EP, it’s also sort of necessary to place us into context at the beginning. To keep it short: Forever Since Breakfast was the first thing the band recorded and was the last to be recorded in a proper studio for about a decade so. It sounds uncommonly like early R.E.M., a comparison that would hold true for the band for the rest of the Eighties. Decent enough stuff, although Pollard would later disparage the album as “a mediocre recording in a very sterile environment”.

Standouts:

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Devil Between My Toes

★★★☆

Released February 15th, 1987 on Schwa Records

The band’s debut LP takes the same sort of tone as their debut EP, although it is much more charming by virtue of its cheaper production values. It still sounds like Murmur, although the band’s later style still shows through in places. While not essential, it is still a fun listen and contains some real winners. Only 300 copies were originally made of the album, which set the tone for pressing runs for the band up into the early 1990s.

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Sandbox

★☆

Released 1987 on Halo Records

The band’s second album found them attempting to add a much harder guitar sound into their college rock sound, to middling results. Pollard considers it the band’s worst album, and there is little to be said against this; it sounds muddled, with gain-fueled guitars present often for the sake of having them.

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Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia

★★★

Released 1989 on Halo Records

Considered by many to be the first “proper” GBV album, in that it’s the first album to introduce the lo-fi, 4-track manipulation vibe that would go on to form the bones of the group’s sound. The album has much more of an off-the-cuff cut-and-paste vibe than their first two albums, and the willingness to commit just about any idea that comes into Pollard’s head has its spiritual origin here. It still drags in places and is haunted by the jangly ghost of IRS-era R.E.M., but for all intents and purposes the legacy of their lo-fi era begins here.

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Same Place The Fly Got Smashed

★★★★☆

Released February 21st, 1990 on Rocket # 9 Records

My favourite of all of the pre-popular GBV albums, Same Place The Fly Got Smashed is also Pollard’s favourite album for lyrics. The album is sort of a concept album about the lives and deaths of alcoholics in the great go-nowhere of the Midwest. It’s fairly straight-forward, as far as later GBV releases would go, although the interspersed short sketches are definitely a harbinger of things to come. “Blatant Doom Trip” is one of the great rock ‘n’ roll grooves.

Halfway Point: The Best 50 Albums Of 2013 (So Far), Part Five

And here we are at the top 10. What a ride. Or something. This list will probably undergo some transformation before the end of the year, naturally, but it’s hard to say how radical that change will be. Especially the top 10, although I’m certain some of it will shift before we call it quits on 2013. And if you haven’t bought my book yet, you should do that before the end of 2013, too. Or, say, before the end of today. That would be nice too. HINT HINT: http://amzn.to/19HF1tc

#10: Baths – “Obsidian”

Cerulean was such an amazing debut that it was hard for me to imagine Will Wiesenfeld topping it. Yet, here we are, with the stellar sophomore album Obsidian. The terms are darker, this time around; the aching beauty is souring, turning in on itself, yet never once does it become a drag to listen to. It will leap out of your stereo and ask you to commiserate with it, and you will.

#09: FIDLAR – “FIDLAR”

Here we are, sweating through the summer of 2013, and to aid in this we have an album that breathes sweltering punk abandon, from the opening shots of “Cheap Beer” (I DRINK CHEAP BEER SO WHAT FUCK YOU) through each and every classic L.A. skater punk nugget. They win no points for originality, and they don’t need to: this is pure, raw rock ‘n’ roll, and if you need more than you should simply have another beer and repeat until you don’t care any more.

#08: Daft Punk – “Random Access Memories”

I heard “Get Lucky” on an Easy Rock format station the other day. That’s how ubiquitous this album is getting: your mom has heard it, your office secretary has heard it, the middle manager at your firm has heard it, all the kids in your class are blasting it from their bedroom windows. My neighbours are doing that, possibly right as we speak. It’s not the most pretentious or artsy funk album, but it’s certainly the most effective. Daft Punk Everywhere: that’s the Summer of 2013, folks. Now lose yourself to dance.

#07: Parquet Courts – “Light Up Gold”

Barely an album from 2013, but technicality is the soul of life, or something; regardless, the album counts (thank you mid-January re-release) and is top-to-bottom impressive. This is a album of poppy punk, but not pop-punk; it lacks the genre’s characteristically annoying adolescence and sk8r-boi mentality and substitutes smart melodic sense and a refreshingly full brevity. These songs will stick in your head and they will take up residence there.

#06: Foxygen – “We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors Of Peace And Magic”

There are albums that are derivative and this is a bad thing; they wear their influences like riot shields, proclaiming that they’re just like Band X in an attempt to woo people who are looking for bands just like Band X. Then, there are bands like Foxygen. Foxygen is not original. One listen to “No Destruction” will tell you immediately that they are heavily indebted to the magic of the Psychedelic Sixties. At the same time, it’s impossible to pinpoint exactly which bands they’re ripping off at any one given time. Instead, it’s safest to say that they’re ripping off the entire decade at once: We Are is a distillation of every great moment the decade produced, solidified into one hell of an homage.

#05: Boards Of Canada – “Tomorrow’s Harvest”

There are a number of bands releasing albums in 2013 that haven’t released albums in quite some time. It may not have been as long an interval from The Campfire Headphase as, say, Loveless, but it’s safe to say that, of all the classic bands, few have or will approach the level of quality offered up by this Scottish duo. That Campfire alienated a lot of long-time fans is a matter of public record; to the group’s credit, Tomorrow’s Harvest sounds like it takes up where the much better Geogaddi left off back in 2002.

#04: The National – “Trouble Will Find Me”

The band’s sixth album finds them settling into a serious groove, where the style is their very own and it’s done to perfection. It continues on perfectly in an evolution of sound from Alligator onward, mellowing out slightly from High Violet but retaining the crushing sense of sad-eyed aplomb. It’s hard to name a better pop band operating today.

#03: Deafheaven – “Sunbather”

An immediately gripping set that combines the best parts of black metal with the best movements of post-rock and creates something that may not be entirely wholly new but is definitely the most cohesive statement of such music ever made. The bleak, winter-driven howls and blur-of-shoegaze guitars are there, but the suite-sets and crescendo-patterns are pure post-rock; the result is something that is not black metal, but can be considered to be truly post-black metal. Definitely a junction-point in the fringe of music, and an album that will be pored over and discussed for years to come.

#02: Kanye West – “Yeezus”

The most divisive album of the year: those who like it, like it a lot, and vice versa. The distorted synths and electro drums gained fans and enemies in equal measure. The fact, however, is this: even when it was obsessive online haters trying to dominate the conversation, it still meant that people were talking about Kanye and only Kanye. The man is likely the premier artist of our musical times, a juggernaut that is helping to bring hip hop into its artistic phase, much as the Beatles helped usher in the artsy phase of rock ‘n’ roll. The album is a winner, though, repetitive internet shitposters be damned; it is a brutal blend of swag rap, pummeling post-OFWGKTA production, and trap music, touched off with a classic Kanye soul sample in the end.

UH HUH HONEY 😉

#01: Deerhunter – “Monomania”

Deerhunter have been the most consistently impressive rock band in recent memory; Cryptograms, Microcastle, and Halcyon Days are all stone cold classics, utilizing devastating rhythms, obscure vocals, and a deliciously smoky sense of haze to craft the very definition of cutting-edge indie rock. Monomania finds them stripping away a lot of that haze; the idea this time out seems to be to craft a much more stripped-down, straight-ahead version of Deerhunter, and the results are nothing short of stupendous. It’s a leather-jacket album, touching on garage, freewheeling spirits, and a newfound love of the Grateful Dead. For longtime fans of the band, this can be somewhat off-putting at first, until that first rhythmic groove kicks in; from then on, you realize it’s Deerhunter, larger than life and fifty times tougher. Much like Microcastle, it’s become my go-to album: when all else fails, I reach for Monomania, because I’m always in the mood for it.

Halfway Point: The Best 50 Albums of 2013 (So Far), Part Four

Top 20 time, with a couple of radical Scandinavians, some burning garage rock, some glittering cold post-punk, and a stunning ambient debut. Did I mention that you should buy my book? Did I mention that you can get it right here and it only costs $3?

#20: The Knife – “Shaking The Habitual”

Silent Shout was a glittering example of how effecting pop could be forged out of Eurotrance cheese. Shaking The Habitual is an example of how to advance social justice through pure dark noise. Less a darkwave/pop album than it is a black ambient record, the Foucault-referencing, hyper-radical tracks found on here seem at times to eat light. The perfect soundtrack for when your radical gender studies study group starts to get druggy.

#19: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – “Push The Sky Away”

If Dig Lazarus Dig!!! was the raucous, garage-blasting record that rejuvenated the Bad Seeds, Push The Sky Away is the contemplative record that digs through the ashes of that barnburner and finds peace, serenity, and further reasons to remain unsettled. There is a core of strength at the heart of all of these songs that sustains the listeners for long after the last notes of the hymn-like title track fade out.

#18: Oblivians – “Desperation”

Sixteen years after their last record, the legendary Memphis garage punks have put out an album that sounds like a direct evolution of the point that they left off at. The band slashes along with more verve and energy than a thousand younger bands. It’s funny, though, in an existential way, that the band couldn’t drop this album until well after the death of super-fan Jay Reatard; it sounds pretty much like an album that late juggernaut would have recorded, had he matured slightly before killing himself with coke.

#17: Savages – “Silence Yourself”

The hot buzz band to watch for the year, Savages take a, uh, savage look at the modern rock scene and ask you to despair. They then cobble together a mix of post-punk, electro-pop, and krautrock and ask you to drink of it. When you complain, meekly, that it tastes bitter, they tell you that the taste is merely your own tears. And you weep again.

#16: Var – “No One Dances Quite Like My Brothers”

The Copenhagen band does pretty much everything I just said about Savages, but does it slightly better. Also, can I take a moment here to express my undying love for whomever designs the LP covers for Sacred Bones? The unity of design makes me want to die of sheer happiness.

#15: Thee Oh Sees – “Floating Coffin”

The veteran garage band rolls on, crafting an album that is at once heavier and more cohesive than anything that they’ve released before. Don’t be fooled, though: the San Fransisco band still throws out moments of sheer psychedelic bliss , a skill with which they have no equal today.

#14: Kurt Vile – “Wakin’ On A Pretty Daze”

Kurt Vile makes gorgeous, sprawled-out stoner pop seem absolutely effortless. Even when the tracks stretch to the nine minute mark (as on the opener, for example) they don’t lose their way; the maintenance of cohesion is nothing short of amazing.

#13: Grouper – “The Man Who Died In His Boat”

Liz Harris’ newest album is, at it’s heart, merely tracks that were recorded during the sessions for 2008’s Dragging A Dead Deer Up The Hill. The trick, however, is that the album never once sounds like a collection of cast-offs or b-sides; it is a strong, shimmering, beautiful collection all on its own.

#12: Pissed Jeans – “Honeys”

Honeys is a motherfucker of an album, in a way that their previous effort, King Of Jeans, came close to but never quite achieved. I first caught this band on a Sub Pop sampler in 2009, and Honeys fulfills the sheer weight of smashing ambition that leapt out of that disc and tried to strangle me. Not for the faint of heart, or for anyone who dislikes crushingly heavy hardcore riffs.

#11: Jon Hopkins – “Immunity”

My wife keeps asking me why I’m listening to house music. Like the terrible music snob I am, I have to tell her two things: first, it’s ambient electronic, and second, it’s jaw-dropping. Jon Hopkins has been kicking around for a while; he’s collaborated with Imogen Heap, hooked up with Brian Eno, co-produced Viva La Vida (Or Death And All His Friends), and most recently teamed up with Scottish singer-songwriter King Creosote for 2010’s diamond-in-the-rough Diamond Mine, which is where he first caught my attention. Immunity is possibly the best ambient album released in a decade, without hyperbole. I literally cannot stop listening to it. Someone help me. Please?

Halfway Point: The Best 50 Albums of 2013 (So Far), Part Three

As we rapidly hurtle towards the mid-day of 2013, we reflect on the greatness of the music that has, so far, been presented to us. We marvel in the past, present, and future of hip hop, and we witness the return of a powerhouse legend. We head on over to http://www.amazon.com/Disappearance-ebook/dp/B00DL123N2/ where we buy a copy of my book, because it’s a fun post-apocalyptic romp. We bear witness to the enduring strength and resilience of rock ‘n’ roll. Let us bow our heads.

#30: Ghostface Killah – “Twelve Reasons To Die”

With a production very similar to executive producer RZA, and the familiar flow and bite of the veteran MC, Twelve Reasons To Die pays dirty homage to the sound of the Nineties while offering up one compelling track after another. A concept album involving an Italian mobster resurrected as the Ghostface Killah, it’s both utterly unsurprising and stridently riveting.

#29: The Men – “New Moon”

“Maturity” can be such a dirty word, but in the case of Brooklyn’s The Men, it fits like a well-worn work glove. On their fourth album they balance the booming punk rock energy with a more contemplative, Neil Young-esque sense of style, and the results take their sound to a very heartfelt level.

#28: Camera Obscura – “Desire Lines”

Their best album since Underachievers Please Try Harder, the Scottish indie pop band crafts a delicate, wistful album of gently affecting music to listen to on a quiet night with good coffee. Any situation, really, where you can appreciate Tracyanne Campbell’s deliberate style of sighing, wink-and-nudge humour and devastating lyrical observations.

#27: Beach Fossils – “Clash The Truth”

Laid-back stoner pop that walks a fine line between trying and not trying. It has much more punch and energy than most albums that come out sounding like this, likely due to the band’s background in hardcore punk.

#26: Youth Lagoon – “Wondrous Bughouse”

Dreamy psychedelic noise, like a dark LSD trip converted into an album. Gorgeous, even when it might be trying to kill you.

#25: My Bloody Valentine – “m b v”

After 22 years, it could have been another classically tragic exercise in “why bother?”. Instead, it proved to be worthy of the MBV legacy, cranking the heavier end of shoegaze into high gear and making those melody-obscuring vacuums sound even more massively dreamy than they ever had been before.

#24: Milo – “Things That Happen At Day/Things That Happen At Night”

The lord and master of sensitive nerd-rappers, Milo presents here a double EP that manages to art up hip hop for the internet age, reworking the genre through the filter of ambient production and deadpan rhymes. This is not party rap, in the best possible sense.

#23: A$AP Rocky – “Long. Live. A$AP”

The swag rap present of hip hop, A$AP oozes confidence over a series of next-level productions, including some of the best stuff Clams Casino has come out with to date.

#22: Mount Kimbie – “Cold Spring Fault Less Youth”

Remember when dubstep was a British invention revolving around dub and 2-step garage? Burial? How did we get from there to Skrillex, again? Joel Zimmerman, is this your fault? Anyway, Cold Spring Fault Less Youth finds the British group throwing out post-dubstep in favour of cross-genre pollination with pop and rock, making for an album that feels as innovative as it does familiar.

#21: Mikal Cronin – “MCII”

Oh, what a shock: raw, punk-inflected garage rock has, once again, saved rock ‘n’ roll from irrelevancy. Another generation has decided to go dig up the corpse. The sometime Ty Segall collaborator’s first album for Merge has some real crossover appeal (sort of) with a heavy emphasis on Seventies power pop studded in amongst all that squalling amped-up stomp.

Halfway Point: The Best 50 Albums of 2013 (So Far), Part Two

Woah, here we are again, going from 40 to 31 for fun and profit (no profit). Again, a gentle reminder to check out my book located here for all of your post-apocalyptic Toronto fun.

#40: Bonobo – “The North Borders”

Bonobo’s 2010 album, Black Sands, was a godsend of minimalist ambient downtempo production, and while The North Borders doesn’t quite scale those lofty heights, it is still very, very good work. There’s a sense of flow and form here that can be often lacking in his contemporaries.

#39: Autechre – “Exai”

The British duo are up to eleven albums now and they never quite get easier. Exai further explores the realms of noise and dissonance within an electronic setting, and is probably their strongest work since the late 1990s.

#38: Waxahatchee – “Cerulean Salt”

Singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield’s second album, which ups the gambit on very personal songs and improves the quality. Humble weariness, mundane disappointment, and wavering fragility abound.

#37: Jello Biafra & The Guantanamo School Of Medicine – “White People And The Damage Done”

The punk legend blasts on with his new band and his new, post-Occupy sense of purpose. Slashing power chords and strident anger bring to mind the best of the Dead Kennedys, with shiny new production values.

#36: Cayucas – “Bigfoot”

A big blast of a summer album. Nothing original or innovative, but still great fun regardless.

#35: Ghostpoet – “Some Say I So I Say Light”

The man’s name is completely appropriate: this is ghostly ambient hip hop with a blurred urban eye for poetry. Something to contemplate through headphones in the dead of night.

#34: Dirty Beaches – “Drifters/Love Is The Devil”

Part lo-fi rave-up, part ambient noise experiment, all Canadian road warrior, Dirty Beaches brings that sweltering night rush to life. Equal parts dread and abandon.

#33: The Flaming Lips – “The Terror”

The experimental psychedelic rock band (the Pink Floyd of our times?) forges on with a spacey, dread-filled album obsessed with the central terror of existence: that, even without love, life muddles on, empty yet filled with its own hideous vitality. How many people thought, after picking up Transmissions From The Satellite Heart on the strength of “She Don’t Use Jelly”, that we would be here twenty years and a legendary career later?

#32: Pheonix – “Bankrupt!”

The French art-pop band returns with another solid collection of dancey radio-ready hits. Hard to deny, even if you’re not normally into this sort of thing. The band takes the synths, shoves them to the front, and crafts a gigantic stadium festival dance party.

#31: Chelsea Light Moving – “Chelsea Light Moving”

Post-breakup, Thurston Moore brings out the big guns, releasing an album of classic indie stomp with dollops of that signature Sonic Youth searing skronk. The legacy of a classic band is in good hands.

The Thermals – “Desperate Ground”

Once upon a time, years ago, I was listening to music in my room when my SIL’s friend came in to say hi. After handing me a Heineken he focused his ears wrinkled his nose, and asked “are you listening to pop punk?”. I glared at him over the lip of my beer and growled “no, I’m listening to the Thermals”. That was a hell of a long time ago – eight years gone or so – and that album was The Body, The Blood, The Machine, a tour-de-force of firebrand conceptual punk. As it turns out, it was also the band’s highwater mark; everything that came after got increasingly more muddled. Desperate Ground does not reverse this trend, rather it neatly encapsulates it. The album has one great track (the opener, “Born To Kill”) and the rest blend into each other with surface-level politics and same old-same old power chords that fall over each other in an effort to get to the end. After the last chord rings out you’ll be hard-pressed to separate it from any other three-chord radio-punk band you’ve heard in the last decade. I guess all heroes must fall eventually.

Final Mark: C

Thee Oh Sees – “Floating Coffin”

Floating Coffin continues on in the band’s new tradition of becoming tighter and heavier as their albums roll on. It’s still wild Sixties-esque garage rock, but with a greater emphasis on being bigger, larger than life. They’ve managed to cut out a lot of the weirder, screechier moments that marred otherwise great albums like Castlemania; instead, they’ve been replaced with slower, more melodic moments that add much needed contrast to the sort of beehive riffs that tracks like “Toe Cutter – Thumb Buster” are made out of. It still flags somewhere around the middle (“Strawberries 1 + 2”, to be exact) but the strength of the rest of the album makes up for it. It’s perhaps the first time that Thee Oh Sees can place an album next to their contemporaries and not feel weirdly out of place – hell, they even made a video this time around. Maybe they’re growing up?

Final Mark: A-

Kurt Vile – “Wakin On A Pretty Daze”

Kurt Vile makes it all sound so easy, doesn’t he? He crafts the perfect laid-back stoner rock for laid-back stoner dudes, draping it in gorgeous, fleet-fingered guitar work that itself sounds like he’s spinning gold out of lounging back on his couch. The former guitarist for The War On Drugs has followed up 2011’s excellent Smoke Rings For My Halo with a sprawling album that revels in soulful, low-key lead guitar melodies that seem to echo on forever a la the best of Crazy Horse. The songs stretch out and find their own grooves; the effect is somewhat like watching the ambient light levels change through the curtains over the course of an afternoon spent relaxing by doing nothing much at all. The idea is not foreign to its creator: Vile told MTV that “the whole general thing is one long daze, and that’s waking up”. If you’re not in the right frame of mind, however, it can seem to outstay its welcome, and his head-back-staring-at-the-sky drawl can seem to blend together after a while. If you are in the right mood, however, it feels like the greatest open-air arena show that never wants to end. Interestingly enough, the incense-scented folks over at RYM have this album logged in as the best of 2013 so far – that alone necessitates a spin, doesn’t it?

FINAL MARK: A-

Youth Lagoon – “Wondrous Bughouse”

Trevor Powers’ second album is immediately much denser than his 2011 debut, more willing to dive into that gravity well in an effort to slingshot around and achieve warp speed a la Star Trek IV. His work with Youth Lagoon is built around layers of psychedelic noise built into swooping loops and juxtapositions of drone with melody. The best tracks here, such as “Dropla” and “Mute”, marry the dizzying psych work with strong central thematic melodies – “Dropla” in particular will find it’s way into the center of your brain. At its worst, however, like “Attic Doctor” or “Sleep Paralysis”, it becomes nothing more than a circus celebration of self-indulgent loops, like Animal Collective on auto pilot. At its root, the best that can be said of it is that it takes its whimsy very seriously, and that this can come off as a virtue most of the time. It is definitely an album that can be said to have grown, if somewhat painfully, from The Year Of Hibernation, and the songs are all more or less strong enough to whet the appetite while Powers does some more growing and maturing and comes out with a third album that will likely captivate everyone. Think of Wondrous Bughouse as his adolescent phase: gangly, awkward, a little of full of itself, but brimming with promise and youthful charm.