Rey Pila - S/t

Diego Solórzano hits his peak in the middle of Rey Pila, with dance rock anthem “No. 114.” Crunchy guitar riffs sizzle into a climbing solo that ascends into a maelstrom of a chorus. It’s one of the four Spanish-language songs on this bilingual album that the former frontman of Los Dynamite recorded in New York with producer/engineer Paul Majahan (TV On The Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs). Much of the rest of the album falls victim to thin vocals and dying disco beats. Solórzano would be better off abandoning the airy falsetto that clouds Rey Pila with weightless muck, instead focusing on his capable crooning.

CSS - La Liberacíon

La Liberación is the international answer to Ke$ha. Trite lyrics almost being the point here, CSS is around to start the party, not the conversation. The fivesome from São Paulo, Brazil, is best when not taken seriously. Hedonistic, restless, and snot-nosed, La Liberación is pure club scene. Surging beats and blaring synths flow throughout showstoppers like “I Love You” and “City Grrrl,” which fans of Far East Movement would be absolutely silly not to embrace. CSS, though, is far less of a guilty pleasure. The international vibe on the album feels more cultured and less constructed than most of the Guetta-ized tunes currently playing the dance scene. Elsewhere, CSS (short for Cansei de Ser Sexy, or “tired of being sexy”) finds an island vibe on “Echo of Love,” and sways to a chilled-out reggae swing in “Hits Me Like a Rock.” On the latter, frontwoman Lovefoxxx’s speak-singing hearkens to M.I.A with a Portuguese accent. The title track, the only Spanish-language song on the album, is also the most immediate. Tight guitar grumble, infectious yelled choruses, and a punk rock fever leave the body as quickly as they enter. The delicate piano twinkling in “Partners in Crime” is a pleasantly jazzy surprise on an album meant for the rave.

Disappointingly, the second half of the album loses some of the sting. It gets embarrassing on “Red Alert,” a sultry, snake-like song featuring Brookyn electronic duo, Ratatat. Lovefoxx groans for a lover to meet her in the desert, where she’s “feeling the rhythm of casual love,” detailing a sexual encounter atop low-tempo syncopation. But again, it’s better to tune out the meaning, focusing instead on La Liberación’s ability to make every muscle in the body burn with an itch to dance. Above all, the point is liberation, freedom from caring, and a hell of a lot of booty shaking.

sunday morning.

I really dislike reviewing records I don't enjoy. Forcing yourself to listen to something that makes you miserable multiple times, just so you can formulate words for your dislike. It seems silly and counter-intuitive. I'd rather dull recordings just go unsaid instead of insulted, but that's not the world we live in, is it?

Alexander Turnquist - Hallway of Mirrors

Well wasn't this a surprise?

My mom brought me this album when she visited me last week. (No, my mother does not have strange 12-string guitar obsessions or taste for independent music. Although that would be awesome. A publicist sent Alexander Turnquist's 5-song EP, Hallway of Mirrors, to my previous address.) I guess it had been in Cleveland for a while now. Last week, I put the album in my 6-CD stereo in my car. I was flipping around today, trying to goad myself off the new My Morning Jacket album for a hot second.

Is goad a word? Let's pretend it is and move on.

This instrumental EP is absolutely mind-blowing in the most calming sense. It's the kind of album that screams out to you when you're driving home from work at 11pm on pitch black highways and needing to space out after listening to police scanners for 8 hours. (Wait, that's just me? Oh, right. You have normal jobs and/or are students.)



Hallway of Mirrors sparkles with cinematic greatness. (Greatness in the sense of large and masterful, not Tony the Tiger "they're great"-ness.) Every song here evokes an almost overpowering feeling. The odd thing is the first adjective that came to my mind, before I even knew the EP's title, was sparkling. It's very organic sounding but also quite ornate.

The first song, "Running Towards," is curious, almost alien sounding. Sparkling spiders and cobwebs that shimmer in the night. The title track is one of those songs that makes you fantasize about having your own soundtrack. You know what I mean? Where you're like, "YES! This is the music that will follow me around for a day while someone makes a film about how tragic/brilliant/screwed up/dramatic my life is." In this case, the music has this elegance to it, yet a cluttered claustrophobia that puts you slightly on edge. I imagine myself floating around with my nose slightly turned up like a Victorian girl or smiling with a slight arrogance. (Not sure where I'm getting this impression - I swear the music is shaping it - because right now I'm recovering from surgery and my left eye is droopy and I feel anything but elegant and arrogant.)

And get this -- track 3, "Spherical Aberrations," actually made me feel like I was living on the prairie, on my way to enduring a very difficult task, such as carrying two huge buckets of water up a large hill on my way to telling the village elder that all the children are dying of malaria. (wtf? i know right?) But seriously, you have to listen to this song, and you'll understand. These songs put you into a story that you didn't even know was in your brain. Why else would I be having prairie fantasies at 12:15 on Friday morning?

Alright, so you're sick of my stories and you wanna know what this music actually sounds like? I can't explain it. Turnquist plays a 12-string guitar which is constantly being picked over like the knocked over contents of a pinata at your little cousin's birthday party. His fingers must literally be flying. And there are slight chimes that he's weaving melodically through the songs. And violin or some other string instruments adding emotion and texture to the seamless yet nonsensical compositions. No percussion, just this alien sound.

Wait. Is Turnquist a one man band? Let's google this. (I'm being very unprofessional tonight.)

I found this:

Like James Blackshaw, Jack Rose, Glenn Jones, etc, this could roughly be described as “raga” guitar, with its long, modal compositions and hypnotic overtone play.

But what in the world does that even mean? I'm not a guitar prodigy over here! Time to turn to Wikipedia.

Alexander Turnquist (born 1988 in Idaho) is an American guitarist and composer. He has released original albums on the VHF record label as well as limited released titles on the Kning Disk imprint and Textura record label. Turnquist's has had comparisons to Guitarists Jack Rose, Alex De Grassi, Kaki King, and James Blackshaw as well as contemporary composer Phillip Glass.

Turnquist's First widely released album "Faint at the Loudest Hour" (VHF Records 2007) was given high marks with an 8.2 in the Popular music review website Pitchfork [1]. His Second release with the VHF Records label "As the Twilight Crane Dreams in Color" was named the #6 out of The Silent Ballet top 50 Albums of 2009 [2].

Crap! Pitchfork found him before me! D'oh. Oh well. This guy rules. He's younger than me and he massages the guitar like it's a freakin labrador retriever. (Not sure what I mean by that, so if you do, I'm sorry.) You should check him out. (P.S. Check out the number of grammatical mistakes in that Wikipedia entry.) Goodnight.

Adam Torres covers Nick Drake

What can I say about Adam Torres that I haven't already said a billion times? It has actually been a while since I've written about this musical hero on my blog, so if you're just tuning in, I'll give you some background information.

I have been following Adam since my freshman year at Ohio University, where I would go to the Front Room (coffee shop) at the old Baker Center to watch open mic nights. Adam was so unassuming and wonderful. He would play his guitar in a pair of gym shorts, making witty, sarcastic comments between songs. And his songs, they were so powerful. From day one.

Adam also tells the best stories. One time, in an interview on my radio show, he told me about his process of creating his album art for his first album. He illustrated a design, and he wanted to give it an aged look, with frayed edges and a sun-soaked feel. So Adam bought a package at one of the dozens of tanning salons overtaken by shallow college ladies to "age" his art. I can't remember exactly how he told the story, but I know it involved a lot of embarrassment around said tanned ladies and a not-so-successful "tanning of paper" process.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic. Adam's album, Nostra Nova, was a seminal piece of my understanding and love of music. I can't count how many times I've listened to it. He sings so delicately and powerfully, all at once. His guitar playing is wholly original and personal, each song touching a different piece of the heart.

When he decided to take a break from writing new music for a while, I (along with countless others) was devastated. He's been adventuring around the world, though, and he's starting to reveal some of the music that various cultures have influenced.

I thought I'd share this video he created in Cuenca, Ecuador. The music and photography is all by Adam. Beautiful as always.

And if you enjoy it, I suggest you take a listen to the new songs he has posted on his bandcamp page.

My Haphazard Relationship with My Morning Jacket

My relationship with My Morning Jacket began after my freshman year of college. I went to Lollapalooza, my first ever music festival, that summer with three of my best friends. It was my first experience with the most heavenly days of life, those filled with back-to-back concerts, chasing from one field to another to catch the next show, standing until dehydration and exhaustion overtook my body.

We watched My Morning Jacket at the Bud Light stage, one of the two huge stages. You could see the Chicago landscape behind the stage, but my focal point was on this wasted lady in a long dress and heels, dancing off to the side of front pit, waving her arms in oblivion to the minutes-long jams into which each song eventually morphed. I could do without it. In fact, I grew bored, stared vacantly into the shade of the trees to the side of the stage. I couldn't for the life of me understand the appeal of My Morning Jacket. I've never been much of a jammer. Not sure if I lack a chemical in my brain or the capacity to injest mushrooms. Either way, I felt nothing.

My friends proceeded to travel up to Cleveland -- my hometown -- sometime that fall to catch another My Morning Jacket show. I stayed behind in Athens. Forget it, I said. No way I'm paying to see them.

My sophomore year roommate, Lauren, was on an MMJ kick. She would play "One Big Holiday" every morning as soon as we woke up. Along with that one stupid album by the Format that everyone except me loved. I would cringe when she played it, but eventually it became habit, and it kinda settled into the depths of me, and I accepted it. (And this is no dis to Lauren. She also played Paul Simon some mornings. She has lovely taste. To this day, the mix CD she made me before I went to Spain is the best mix CD anyone has ever made for me.)

I saw My Morning Jacket the next summer, once again at Lollapalooza. But this time, they played the opposite large stage, and we sat on the hill by the baseball field. The Chicago Youth Orchestra (I believe) came onstage, and it was sort of unreal. Yet I still didn't get it.

The moment I really heard My Morning Jacket was May of 2008, the first time I heard Evil Urges. This album was unlike any other MMJ album. Falsetto, Prince-like, or Winnie-the-Pooh-like. Spacey electronics, ambling love songs and an ode to a special librarian, tongue in cheek, so clever, so embraceable. "Highly Suspicious" was highly messed up, and one of the best weirdo songs I'd ever heard. I rated the album as my #3 favorite of 2008 (after Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver's debut albums). It was all over the place, the kind of sonic adventure that makes you want to dive off a cliff into musical oblivion.

I explored their older material, finding that even the songs that once irritated me were so incredibly magical. All that time, I had under-appreciated what was right in front of me.

When I decided to move to Louisville, I had no idea I was moving to the band's hometown. In fact, I knew pretty much nothing about Kentucky or Louisville or horses or the fact that it was on the Ohio River. I didn't know that My Morning Jacket recorded one of their live albums partially at Ear X-tacy, an independent record store here. I didn't know until I listened to that live album, which my friend Josh had just made me a copy of, and heard Jim James pledging allegiance to Louisville and the store. And then it was fate for me to love the band. And the city, for that matter.

I went to Ear X-tacy last night. They were releasing MMJ's Circuital at midnight. I wanted to see the excitement. At least a hundred people showed up. The town felt alive. On a Monday night, it was alive. The record has been on repeat all day, and I think it might just top Evil Urges for me. The first three... hell, every song has roped me in. "Holdin' on to Black Metal" is maybe more courageous than "Highly Suspicious," "Wonderful (The Way I Feel)" is completely devoted, and I can't even begin to get my head to stop spinning from the title track.

The band is playing at the Palace right now. I didn't get a ticket before they sold out, but strangely, Todd Haynes (I'm not gonna go off on too large of a tangent, but I kinda worship the guy. His short film about Karen Carpenter that I watched in a women's studies class made me cry. It was made entirely of barbie dolls that he carved to the point of emaciation. And those barbie dolls made me cry. That's how good he is.) is directing a live youtube streaming event of the concert. I've been watching it all night. The last song in their first encore? "One Big Holiday." Huh.

I'm about ten minutes from the venue, yet I'm sitting in my room, wondering how I fell so hard in love with a band that I once stood so strongly against.

Maybe I'm growing up. Maybe I'm growing weirder. Maybe, just maybe, I'm just riding the path that is my life, and as I travel farther, I grow closer to understanding all these things I've missed along the way.

Handsome Furs - Sound Kapital

The greatness of Handsome Furs lies in duality. Husband-and-wife team Dan Boeckner (of Wolf Parade) and Alexei Perry have the unrestricted energy of fiery lovers, which they display in full force during their onstage spit-swapping and bodily jerks in each other’s direction. That passion typically comes through their music when Boeckner’s steamy guitar squalls meet Perry’s infectious electrobeats. The dirty quality of his ax somehow meshes perfectly with the precise yet spontaneous rhythm of her synth blasts. Sound Kapital was written primarily on keyboards, and the result feels more club, less rock and roll. It has the same jarring claustrophobia as Handsome Furs’ previous two albums, but misses some of the impulsiveness. Still, their latest demonstrates more of a patience for song-craft than ever before. “What About Us,” the first single, meshes an intermittent bee-buzzing effect with a simple keyboard melody, only to break off with a spacey bridge where Boeckner begs the song’s subject to break his heart. “When I Get Back” works up a dance fever of the highest order, while “Damage” begins with fuzzy samples of radio broadcasts they collected while touring Asia. Sound Kapital is missing some of the duo’s bark, but it certainly maintains their bite.