The Jesus Lizard - Head

This band's first four albums just got reissued/remastered but I haven't bought or heard them yet. Last night I just got the urge to throw on my trusty shitty little old fashioned CD copy of Head and let me tell you, this is still an absolutely monstrous record in non-remastered compact disc form.

Goat and Liar are the closest things the Lizard has to acknowledged rock canon classics, but Head, the first LP cut by what pretty much everybody will tell you is the "definitive" incarnation of the band, already finds them balls deep in their signature sound, playing styles, and compositional abilities. There was a time when I suspected that this would be the sound of a band "not quite there," but no, in 1990 they most certainly were there and nowhere else.

While the set of songs here is not as breathtakingly perfect as the nine tracks that make up Goat, this is still an album where more than half the songs are highlights, of Head and of the Lizard's career. "One Evening" is as wonderfully bombastic as any of their album openers. Make your way to a Lizard show before they disappear forever yet again and observe just how pumped up the audience gets when they realize the band up on stage just launched into that song or "7 vs. 8" or "S.D.B.J." And who can forget the heart crumbling slow burner "Pastoral," one of the finest moments in Duane Denison's life as a riff shitting guitar god? You can't get this one anywhere else, not even from "Zachariah" or in the lines of an "Elegy."

Back in the days following the punk/post-punk explosion, one had to wonder if anything new really could have been done with the basic drums + guitar + bass formula. Wipers, Minutemen, Flipper, Black Flag, Big Black, The Birthday Day... these groups were balancing elements so simply and originally that the legions of bands that followed in their collective wake were able to sculpt these elements towards truly next level heights, much like how the blueprints laid out by Chuck Berry, The Stooges, and Black Sabbath would be worshiped and built upon. Maybe back in the day people were saying that the Jesus Lizard "sounded like the Birthday Party," but now we look at modern noise rock bands and say that they "sound like the Jesus Lizard." They got everything right on the first Long Player. And yet they still stuck around to get things righter on the next one. God bless these kings of rock 'n roll.

Rating: ****1/2

Download Link: "7 vs. 8"

Jandek - Skirting The Edge

What the fuck is up with this dude's voice? It's high and pussyish on a bunch of his albums, but on Blue Corpse suddenly the vocals are really deep and sad and manly. The rumors say that it was some other guy but it's the same on all the recent live material, as well, and also on this studio album from December 2008, which either means that it was released in 2008 or 2009, a year that it wasn't actually released in. But you can take that up with the rest of the internet. This album is 51 minutes of Jandek playing an acoustic guitar and rambling about shit for 12, 24 minutes at a time occasionally, damn. Everybody's saying that it's "dark" but I didn't really pay attention to the lyrics. But isn't his music always like that? The Jandek of 2009 might be cranking out the occasional feel good jam, but there are none on this album, that's for sure! Yeah.

Rating: It's okay. All of his stuff has the power to transfix me to at least some degree, I think? Everything I've heard, anyway. There's a lot of music that I'm much less interested in listening to for almost a whole hour than this guy rubbing his cock all over an acoustic guitar and moaning about god knows what. Nevertheless, this is the first Jandek album I've paid less than $4.99 for (exact amount: $0.00) and I'm perfectly fine with that.

Download Link: "I KnowMy Name"

Eagle Twin - The Unkindness of Crows

Yo, this is just some doomy Southern Lord shit. It's pretty dark w/ a sick buzzy guitar tone. Kind of brutal but with the boogie rock undertones that you like. The singer has a manly growl, as well.

It's not as good as the Melvins or Harvey Milk or Led Zeppelin but it sounds okay. I don't want to listen to any albums this year that aren't Weezer's album everything else is twice as long as that one.

Rating:

Download Link: Fox Paws - "Arcadio"

Weezer - Raditude

Not even a year and a half ago, Weezer's overwhelmingly fantastic self-titled comeback release signaled a new era for the group, one that would see them holding nothing back and embracing every not necessarily tasteful ambition burning in the back of their collective head. Weezer was a mission statement, an epiphany, a grand declaration of enlightenment, the sound of a band simply not giving a fuck and choosing to indulge their wildest pop dreams regardless of what grouchy critics and fans might have preferred.

And as I hoped I would be able to say a year and a half later while initially freaking out over them, the freshness of "Heart Songs" and "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived" has not faded one bit, yet sadly that of the group's penchant for the unpredictable has. Not much, though. While every announcement of a Lil Wayne guest appearance or zany promotional event or absurd cover choice no longer seems so "wtf????" but more "Oh, there goes Weezer just bein' Weezer," one cannot deny that they're at least trying to outdo themselves in the ridiculousness department. It's to Weezer's credit that these head scratching idiosyncrasies come across so naturally rather than as forced. When naysayers bemoan the fact that "The Weezer that I once knew and loved has been dead for years and they are not coming back any time soon," the victory is on the group's side, as they sound more content and settled into their identity as a band than ever before. The disappointment that many a Blue Album/Pinkerton fan feels no longer arises from having to deal with what they see as the band's failure to produce anything more than a soulless, watered down, bastardized, highly impersonal approximation of what made those albums so enjoyable, but rather from the complete lack of common ground shared between the sensibilities and tastes of these two parties.

And for those who by some unfathomable miracle continue to be consistently pleased by whatever directions the group chooses to take with its career... well, Raditude is, at the very least, ear candy of the most delicious order. Did somebody mention "parties"? Because this album certainly is one! After spending 2008 laying their ambitions for wild 'n crazy good times on the line, Raditude sees Weezer standing by its word and following through with those ambitions. Naturally, the album comes across as considerably less purposeful and audacious than last year's eponymous release. It more closely resembles, say, Long Player exhibit A in what will hopefully be a string of albums that, while presenting the listener with an adventurous batch of successful and/or failed modern pop explorations every time around (as Raditude further proves this era of Weezer to be all about), will inevitably find Weezer assuming the role of "hit factory," the newly embraced "songs about hot chicks and hanging out with your bros" vibe allowing them to knock out compositions in their sleep. This is exactly the sort of carefree, breezy quality that runs through these ten songs, resulting in Weezer's most blatantly summer friendly pop album since 2001's Weezer.

While the slightness of the album as a whole is an essential part of its singular identity within the band's discography, I can't help but feel that the promise of its first four tracks contrasted with the combination of redundancy and occasionally misguided experimentation in the second half builds up to a listening experience that is possibly even more schizophrenic than the style hopping of their self-titled red album. Make no mistake, there is a sense of cohesion running through these songs. Just glance down the tracklisting... "Let It All Hang Out," "Love Is The Answer," "Can't Stop Partying," "The Girl Got Hot." Even when the message of a song like "Can't Stop Partying" is more layered than it seems, the musical and lyrical positivity remains, as if everything in life should resemble a dog flying through the air or a band of 40 year olds titling an album "Raditude."

The four song opening run of "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To"'s high energy stomp, "I'm Your Daddy"'s anthemic new wave, "The Girl Got Hot"'s beer chugging frat rock explosion, and "Can't Stop Partying"'s general wtf-ness is a fine, fine way to let this record barrel out of the gates. However, just as you think Weezer is running amok from corner to corner of the pop music spectrum, they bring in the All-American Rejects' songwriting talents to remind you that not even half a decade ago, they were filling up albums with (what many listeners could not see as anything more than) indistinguishable mid-tempo guitar rock songs. The track "Put Me Back Together" is actually quite good, sporting a chorus that brings to mind the AAR's stronger hits. But it's nevertheless a sign of things being steered back towards more normal territory. "Tripping Down The Freeway," for instance, is built upon the same "Keep Fishin'" recalling drumbeat as "The Girl Got Hot," while the placement of the hooky "Let It All Hang Out" next to the similar but comparatively hookless "In The Mall" finds the former being short-changed on the first few listens. On last year's Weezer, "Dreamin'" was an anomaly on the album for sounding so similar to their more "classic" big guitar pop stylings of the past, yet this handful of Raditude tracks only creates a tension between the group's newfound adventurousness and their default "signature sound." However, even a straightforward rocker like "In The Mall" manages to squeeze in an atmospheric feedback/synth/mall PA system/heavenly chiming guitar chord break, not to mention the heavily treated guitar solo that follows, one of multiple surprising lead guitar parts to pop up throughout the album.

The one song that's really bound to fuck with the listenership is "Love Is The Answer." Sadly, for a song that includes some wicked sitar, Indian woman guest vocals, and yet another balls out guitar solo, it doesn't exactly do a whole lot. Eastern new age cock rock built around mantra-like repetition? Maybe they should leave that one behind permanently. Still, most of these criticisms are stemming from speculation about Weezer's future. Whatever I said about the "Keep Fishin'" drumbeat... forget it. It was nitpicking. Each of this album's ten tracks is a wonderfully singular entity unto itself. While my own sensibilities drive me to hope that Weezer still has much further to sink into total pop insanity and that this album will turn out to be a minor step in an even more unexpected process of evolution for the group, as a snapshot of this process, Raditude is the kind of weirdly perfect half hour pop record that every mainstream pop/rock act should be striving to make. Leave it to Weezer to possess the right amounts of experience, ambition, and humility to know just where to aim.

Rating: 9.3/10 on the Pitchfork Media scale.

Download Link: Vampire Weekend - Contra [2010]... great record.

Yoko Ono - Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band

The missing piece of a highly cacophonous puzzle. Ever wonder why John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band necessitated that title or why he's on the cover with a woman who doesn't really do anything? The answers could very well be "Why not?" and "Because she followed him everywhere," but you're not about to get off that easy, no, sir!

The fact of the matter is that like John Lennon the human being, his first solo outing was not without a complement, a soulmate, a pretentious naked Asian female, and to John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, the similarly titled Yoko Ono/Plastic Band was conceived to be all of those things.

While the Plastic Ono Band could only be described as a loosely knit collective of whatever musicians were willing to put up with these "artists" at any given point in time, history will remember them for that month long period in 1970 (and a bit of time during '71, but that's another review altogether!) when the POB truly was one of the great minimalist noise rock powerhouses this side of the Velvet Underground. Who can deny Klaus Voormann's thumping basswork, Mandingo Starr's bare bones basic yet highly singular drumming style, and John Lennon channeling future child star Steve Albini with some of the filthiest angular guitar strangulations this side of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain? We're all familiar with the driving power of such propulsive bangers as "Well Well Well" and "I Found Out" and sometimes you have to wish Lennon would have followed these by then splendidly refined avant-garde impulses and hooked up with Can or Suicide or something instead of cranking out rockabilly covers and syrupy muzak for the rest of his solo career.

Luckily, it's not just his critically jizzed upon solo debut that features the 1970 era POB's primal raw doggin'. First, the cover. As we all know, John's album features him leaning back on Yoko, symbolizing that he is relaxed and content to release an album of self-absorbed whining laid over plodding cock rock grooves. The cover of Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band, on the other hand, features Yoko sucking off John through a fiery portal to Hell located in the back of her head. Recorded during the same sessions as Lennon's album (I think?), the music on Yoko's record is a similarly stripped down, rackety interpretation of rock 'n roll. Rather than actual "songs," however, the tracks here are all born from an extended improv session where the drums and bass lay down any number of one chord grooves over which Yoko's caterwauling vocals and Lennon's manic slide guitar compete for dominant shrillness.

Yoko does a lot of crazy shit here... making her voice wobble like somebody is shaking her, squawking like a demented ostrich, and oftentimes combining these two approaches. Side two opener "AOS," recorded with Ornette Coleman's quartet, contains her most violently throat mangling screams, although the first half provides the listener with more subdued sounds that are much appreciated. The rest of the record's musical accompaniment is largely made up of the POB's rock based slide guitar heavy jamming, although "Touch Me" and "Paper Shoes" take things into spacier territory, emphasized by the echo used on the latter's vocal track. Neither Yoko or her backing musicians are as graceful as Linda Sharrock and husband Sonny's group on Black Woman, nor does she go to the extremes of Ono disciples such as Adris Hoyos (Harry Pussy) or Maja Ratkje, but perhaps the more primitive rock approach combined with an occasionally patience testing fetish for the Japanese hetai vocal style makes the combination of low art (?) and high art (??!!!) elements all the more effective. A fascinating work from a fascinating and misunderstood artist! Buy it and challenge yourself for once.

Rating: Good if you dig some free jazz bullshit.

Download Link: "Touch Me"... no thanks, Yoko! XD

The-Dream - Love vs. Money

Hey, it's 13 more good songs. The man himself says that Love vs. Money is "like the first album on crack," and I've never done crack, but if it means more synths, more lyrics about fucking, and more guest appearances by your famous friends Lil Jon, Mariah Carey, and Kayne West, the first rapper with a Benz and a backpack... well, fuck. Buy me some. Everything you liked about Love Hate has been amplified to widescreen technicolor proportions, guys. Too many classixx on that wonderfully flowing album length listening experience for this one to surpass it, but I'm more likely to cherrypick favorites from LvsM rather than plow all the way through from start to finish, which inevitably results in having to hear at least 80% of these tracks out of order no matter what. How many more total jams is this guy gonna be able to effortlessly pull out of his ass? He's a radio killa and an R&B guerilla, clearly. Album is just a bag of candy colored tricks. Epic multipart drama with those two title tracks, the soothing slow burner dot gif balladry of "Fancy," stuffing "Take You Home 2 My Mama" with hooks, hooks, hooks galore, closing everything out with a dumb song about girls' butts... every song has at least one good part and then usually a bunch of other ones. If you've been dismissing this one as an overrated product of hipster tokenism, maybe you're right. It's a fucking sick collection of songs, though. Album of the Year until Raditude drops.

Rating: 9.1/10

Download Link: Fenix TX - "Katie W."... great song that was in my Mediafire account.

LEAK OF THE CENTURY



Vampire Weekend - Contra

No review for this one! That's YOUR job! We now khow much you're anticipating this modern classic, so you be the critic. Write a brief review in our comments section and maybe one of our writers will offer you some constructive feedback. Happy listening!

Rating: You tell us!

Download Link: Vampire Weekend - Contra [2010]

antioch arrow - germs of masochism

this is a maelstrom of unapologetic sexuality and angst ridden ferocity

these kids play fast n loose
this is the new wave of androgyny and a poison kissoff to the rules

the cover turned me gay

inspirational verse: "love put a curse on me" this isnt just for kids anymore


RIYL: suede, jill sobule

31G 2003

Flux of Pink Indians - Strive To Survive Causing Least Suffering Possible

Back in my high school days I ran with many members of the "Chicago punk rock scene." They all liked this band a lot and some of them would flip out when I'd talk about Crass, like this shit is somehow superior in every way. Considering how likely most people are to have horrible taste in pretty much everything, it's not surprising that this particular group of people would prefer a band that is basically Crass minus everything that's interesting about that band. The anarchy is there and so are the goofy shouted British guy vocals, but nah, there's nothing memorable here. Sounds like any number of bands could crank out 50 albums of this stuff and have it all be of about equal quality. Although, if you're some hardcore punk guy whose tastes are determined by how innocuously music manages to fit into its given genre, then GET ON THIS!!!

Rating: Average.

Download Link: "Digital Love"... now here's some real shit that slays.

The-Dream - Love Hate

Before Terius Nash had become the indie rock web forum icon that most of the nation knows and loves him as, he released a little heard solo album that only a select few white people really flipped out over. But let me tell you, those folks had the right idea because this is one solid pop LP by one solid guy who makes good music. All the songs are dope as hell especially the singles but you only have to listen to everything after "Falsetto" a few times before it all stops completely running together. Even if you can't remember anything but the choruses from "Purple Kisses," "Playin' In Her Hair," and "Luv Songs," you can still get a kick out of the awesome production which has a lot of pianos (maybe?) and vocal layering and shit. Opener "Shawty Is Da Shit" is just downright heavenly like the first time you shroomed to Person Pitch. Of the main attractions here, "Fast Car" might be the most unrelentlessly hooky but the success with which The-Dream manages to pull off what is more or less a shameless update of "Little Red Corvette" is still ripe for immersing one's self in. And you gotta love how he seamlessly merges that certified banger with the foreboding drama of "Nikki" when you're not looking and doesn't even stop there because it's only setting the stage for the arms-stretched-towards-the-sky climax of "She Needs My Love." Side two has "Mama," which is pretty but pretty BORING, too. I like the Rihanna song. The weaksauce guitar solo in "Falsetto" sounds like shit but other than that this is a really good album.

Rating: 9.2/10

Download Link: "I Luv Your Girl"... you thought I wasn't gonna mention this one didn't you, haha. Just crank it.

City of Caterpillar - City of Caterpillar

Yo, doggs, it's the screamo post-rock revolution from seven years ago. Nine minute songs with some real Godspeed/Mogwai bullshit where they play pleasant quiet parts that are really easy to write if you play the guitar with your fingers and then enhance the drama of those parts with parts that are louder. This is real hardcore, though, so the production sounds like a shiny old asshole and the vocals have that great semi-retarded thing going for them that makes me never listen to the Heroin discography CD that I bought. These are multi-part epics that sound like someone dipped them in poop so even the quiet parts just blur together with the face pummeling anger stuff. Imagine a band as ridiculous and hilarious as Antioch Arrow or Angel Hair trying to play epic black metal and you'll be imagining music that is incredibly ugly and impossible to sit through, i.e. this album. I just find this kind of classic real deal emotion rock to be super fascinating because it's like a filthy incompetent version of actual music.

If you're a hot teen and know a lot of fagz who won't shut up about Explosions In The Sky you gotta sit them down with this authentic boogie rock LP by City Of Caterpillars, full of str8 bangers to lick puss to. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Rating: ?

Download Link: the first song

David Sylvian - Manafon

Not far into the second half of Christian Fennesz's 2004 full length solo release Venice, there's a song called "Transit" that might be the only truly startling moment on an album that sounds much like an artist playing to his strengths without bothering with too many surprises. The track is like any of the other works that make Venice into a sonically engaging yet unassumingly cohesive listening experience (not a bad thing), further displaying Fennesz's skill for combining the lovely with the soul draining via his trademark combination of electronics and processed guitar.

But there's one aspect of "Transit" that goes out of its way to be more memorable than whatever the fuck "The Point of It All," "City of Light," and "Circassian" may or may not have going for them: David Sylvian contributes a guest vocal performance. He has a pleasant enough voice, a sort of dystopian croon that is weathered and classy enough to fit the ultra-serious "modern-day ambient electroacoustic composer" vibe of Venice. There's some enjoyable multi-tracking here and there. The melody is about as interesting as one being shaped around a 1-2 chord drone piece can be... the lyrics, same. Something about asking you to follow him as he says goodbye to Europe. Sounds like he needed some lyrics and wrote them and sang them and that's just how things were gonna be. And why not, really. Good for him.

Do Sylvian's vocal contributions fit? One could say that they're simply too inoffensive not to. Which brings us to a more important question: Couldn't we have just done without these largely useless vocals that feel so arbitrarily tacked on and unnecessary? Why not sit Sylvian down in front of a laptop and have him spew forth some faux poetic bullshit via some spontaneous "too free and stream-of-consciousness to ever become interesting at all" melodies that are so disjointed you can barely even call the damn things "melodies" over Christian Fennesz's entire recorded output?

As evidenced by the few pieces of David Sylvian's post-Japan career that I've managed to come in contact with, he seems to have built up an identity as some kind of avant-garde hanger-on, forcing his boring as all fuck vocal stylings over perfectly decent slices of modern composition and improvisation that would be even more listenable were they to remain untouched. He did it on "Transit," he did it on Ryuichi Sakamoto's "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence," he probably does it all over the contributions of Derek Bailey and Christian Fennesz found on Blemish, and oh, boy, does he just go all out on Manafon, an album that you will probably see in the Wire's top 10 of 2009 and that happens to not be good at all.

Here's the premise: gather together a who's who of heavy-hitters from the history of electroacoustic improvisation, throw Evan Parker in there because he's a good dude who "gets it," record everybody fucking around, overdub some shitty on-the-spot and out-the-ass "improvised" vocal line because it's truer to the nature of the music that way, and hey, who's gonna be naive enough to try and create anything resembling a song out of this plinkety plonkety racket, anyway?

Big surprise that the result ends up being one gigantic snooze. Don't blame the musicians, though, who all tend to be fine when in other contexts and even turn out some choice moments throughout Manafon. No, the blame belongs squarely on Sylvian for thinking this was ever an idea worth pursuing. For constantly being the central focus of these improvisations, Sylvian's vocal talents appear to be more limited than a danged woodblock. The monotonous drone of a voice that he picks as his primary "instrument" for this potential super session is simply dull, dull, dull. There are vocalists in existence who are able to create forward thinking experimental music that straddles the lines between modern composition, avant-garde jazz, and assorted pop elements. However, Sylvian's voice is not ripe enough with the kind of heartbreaking depth that might have allowed Robert Wyatt, Mark Hollis, or Scott Walker to affectively carry this "material" (which would have been done so mainly by not bothering with it in the first place), and if he's capable of the kind of tonal/emotional range that Carla Bozulich and Nick Cave seem to have in spades, he doesn't even attempt to show it here. As a matter of fact, that voice manages to damage any positive view one could have of the potentially enjoyable instrumental performances, emphasizing all that is joyless and unrewardingly patience testing about EAI. This is made all the more tragic by the knowledge that over half a decade ago two of the performers here, Keith Rowe and John Tilbury, recorded the two hour long Duos For Doris, a mammoth work of devastating emotional resonance inspired by the death of Tilbury's mother, an album that was about three times as long as Manafon with roughly a seventh of the musicians yet somehow resulted in an album about ten times as powerful.

If I can't have the dry humor of Kevin Drumm to act as an anchor for my enjoyment of noise, there needs to be something there to latch onto. Something other than boring David Sylvian boringly shitting out pretentious babble that's just fucking boring, which like that Magic I.D. album last year is the kind of wholly empty bottom of the barrel chin stroking crap that only the most joyless IHMers and Erstwhile Records devotees imaginable could possibly see any value in.

Rating: Awful, awful shit.

Download Link: Vampire Weekend - "Horchata"

Akron/Family - Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free

When we last left our bearded heroes, they were in quite the pickle: coping with the loss of one of their leading members right as they were about to get into touring mode for their recently completed roots prog tour de force Love Is Simple. Did they panic and go into hiding, trying to make sense of what their future could possibly hold? Fuck no! Knowing that singer/guitarist Ryan Vanderhoof's absence would surely burrow a gaping hole into the live potential of their demanding new compositions, they instead called up four other hairy young men to ensure that every night spent onstage would be not just a concert, but a party that no one in attendance (or at least this reviewer) would ever forget.

Yet even through all the carefree smiles and fun, a sense of uncertainty loomed large over the touring ensemble's three core members. They'd managed to save their own asses this time, but where to once the party inevitably winds to a close and all the guests go home? Would they forge ahead, following whatever inspiration happens to materialize from their newfound situation, or would they let such a devastating blow shatter everything they'd built up over the past half decade?

Perhaps if the band wasn't so used to tearing up the rulebook every time it came time to pull together a new album length statement, the prospect of starting over may have been a tad more daunting. As much as many so-called fans might still secretly long for one, a rehash of the 2005 self-titled release would have been impossible due to how much they had already mined from such a fertile aesthetic. Perhaps if the album had been anything less than a masterpiece there would have been some room for refinement, more leftover ideas waiting to be uncovered and polished. But this was not the case then, and nor is it now. And so for the third time in a row (not counting an excellent half of a split LP and a "mini-album," jesus, this band!), they've dropped a jawdropping monstrosity out of nowhere, doing things that we previously had no idea they had in them.

Well... kind of. It depends on who you ask, really. To many listeners, "they're still drowning in a mess of unfinished ideas and grating hippy nonsense!" But let's put this one under the microscope and see if we can make it seem notable within the context of Akron/Family's long strange trip, if not that of modern independent rock music in general.

Determination, persistence, and creativity are essential qualities that a band must have when overcoming an obstacle as seemingly crippling as the loss of a crucial member. When life takes away a few of your lemons, you can still make lemonade... just not as much. Or it might just taste worse if you fuck up by not compensating with the amount of water. The human mind is not a lemon, though. When life takes away one of the guys who contributes ideas to your records, it's not taking away the ideas that you will have in the future and it's certainly not taking away the ideas that the situation created by the now former member's departure allows you to come up with and probably wouldn't have occurred to you if you hadn't thrust into that exact situation. Public Image Ltd. did it when bassist/essential component Jah Wobble left, saying, "Fuck bass, we're just going to experiment with percussion," turning out Flowers of Romance, a unique record in their catalog that is great for entirely different reasons than their earlier work with Wobble as a member. Likewise, when Jimmy McCulloch and Joe English left Wings, the core trio of Denny Laine, Linda McCartney, and the guy whose name everyone always forgets soldiered on to create London Town, their most focused and studio exploiting album length statement since the last time they found themselves pared down to the trio format.

While the title of the trio effort that ended up coming out of that "last time" declared the group to be a "Band On The Run," the things that the members of Wings were on the run from most certainly did not include "their ability to come up with spectacular songs." And I am happy to report that the same can be said of the new three piece edition of Akron/Family and its first officially released studio material. Like PiL and Wings before them, the three piece configuration of A/F finds the group exploring the possibilities of the studio environment in ways the A/F that was more set on "being a band" never got to.

From the homemade "kitchen sink aesthetic" approach that characterized their folky debut recording, to the extended group freakouts found on later releases, there has always been an emphasis on the organic, either through the ensemble dynamic or the more intimate "guy playing an acoustic and whispering" tracks that got them lumped in with many of the "freak folk" boom's heaviest (and most irritating) hitters (yet earned the group tragically less acclaim than any of them.) Of course, there were a number of curious sonic embellishments found throughout that first record, and the analogue recording triumph that is Andrew Weiss's production job on Love Is Simple is essentially a more meticulously tinkered with reimagining of the kind of raw overdubless full band showoffery found on their side of Split LP.

Simply put, they now sound bigger than ever. Bigger than three men should be able to sound. While the group has moved beyond songwriting as a vehicle for showcasing its splendid handle on group interaction, the jams remain. When the nearly eight minute "Gravelly Mountains Of The Moon" decides to just collapse into a chaotic mess of freeform noise before breaking off into a distantly recorded group vocal mantra complete with clapping and wailing saxophone sirens, taking the groove higher and higher, and then right at the peak bringing the listener down for a brief final section that is only vocals and piano... well, you get the sense that if this band's naysayers were ever right to call them "indulgent," hearing them more committed to piling sound upon sound over their multipart epics than ever could possibly justify such criticisms.

That noisy abandon is noisier and more a product of studio experimentation than ever before. In some places, it works remarkably well, like in the heavens parting interlude in "Sun Will Shine (Warmth of The Sunship Version)," which is just such a mind-huggingly lovely wash of ambient noise that you'd think you were listening to Tim Hecker or Fennesz or some crap. In other places, like on the tossed off "MBF," the "throwing shit at a wall" approach can feel a bit tedious. Obviously one can't say no to the A+ Steve Howe riffing in the song's opening, but shortly it turns into the guys seeing how much obnoxious noise they can make with a synthesizer while the drummer bangs out some ploddingly guttural floor tom heavy pattern. Before you know it, they're trying on some punishing noise for size, complete with tortured "David Yow at 1:06 in 'Monkey Trick'" screaming.

Brutal? A little bit, I suppose. As is, it just doesn't sound seamlessly integrated into their sound or refreshing due to placement within some unexpected context. The sense that they're only halfway towards reaching whatever it is they're going for isn't just present in the noisefuck explosions, however. "River," "Creatures," and "Many Ghosts" find the group crafting songs that resemble straightforward indie pop more than anything else in their catalog, and not even in the "Yes trying to play a Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 medley" way that made "I've Got Some Friends" such a strangely satisfying would-be hit single in an alternate universe. These songs don't jerk back and forth between sections, but instead stick with rhythms that feel less like any kind of classic rock throwback and more like something groovier and more eclectic. The crawling neo-dub 311 style beatz on "Creatures" were previously relegated to throwaway interludes like the one that closes out "Ed Is Portal," but here it gets a whole song. Sporting a distorted keyboard line and some tasteful horn overdubs, the song contains multiple vocal melodies that are handled with varying degrees of success. The honest attempts at writing pop melodies in this song and "River" feel underwhelmingly simplistic if not just plain lazy, displaying a sing-songiness that is more suited to children's music than the kind of well-crafted potential singles that I might feel like listening to ever. "Many Ghosts" comes closest with its enjoyable minor key melody that climaxes multiple glorious times when the song breaks for some twinklingly sighing harmonies.

The more "produced like a rock album" approach to recording its music that Akron/Family takes on Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free suits these kinds of songs well, however flawed they may be. It displays an evolution in sound and approach that I would not have predicted but that I am eager to see unfold. They still sound most at home on the two back to back country-tinged folk numbers, "Set 'Em Free" and "The Alps & Their Orange Evergreen," which ironically seem to be jammed most awkwardly into the album's more in-the-red than usual production. Elsewhere, the new sound works more naturally with the compositions, like on the galloping opener "Everyone Is Guilty." There the newfound sonic qualities help the neck leaping angular guitar licks achieve an extra thorny quality, doing wonders to enhance a groove that already sounds like Remain In Light remixed by vikings. If the new edition of Akron/Family is capable of moments like this as well as many of the equally successful or even the not all that successful ideas scattered throughout this LP's exhilaratingly schizophrenic 49 minutes, I can say at least one thing about Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free that I've said about every single thing this band was released: as much as this music excites me, I'm even more excited to imagine where they could possibly go next.

Rating: As we approach the end of the decade and look back at how critical opinion has determined many of our favorite (or not so favorite) bands' legacies, I can't help but feel that the underrating of Akron/Family has been one of the consensus's greatest oversights in recent years. To be a fan of this group is to be treated to consistency and a refusal to repeat itself. There are honestly very few indie rock bands these days that please me on the levels that A/F do. A wide array of classic influences and an acute understanding of what elements to pull from them, remarkable tightness as an ensemble that makes listening to their recordings just as stimulating as witnessing them live, perfect ability to utilize their avant-garde ambitions in a way that only enhances their forward thinking songcraft... the only group that even comes close for me is Deerhoof. Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free wasn't "the album that finally broke them," but why shouldn't it have been? It's singular enough within their catalog that one could easily argue that it blows away everything else they've done. They can appropriate African rhythms like the Dirty Projectors, spew out obnoxious rackety bullshit like Animal Collective, and probably do whatever the hell Grizzly Bear does. Is it because they smile too much? Is the noise-making a little too genuine? Is everybody just done with beards? Kind of a shame, really, because this is art rock that isn't afraid of anything, that could give half a fuck about embarrassing itself. Maybe it's really just terrible, but I haven't listened to any new music more this year, although The-Dream, DJ Quik & Kurupt, and Neil Young's album about his car come close.

Fuck everything that's not The Beatles.

Download Link: "Many Ghosts"... a fine little interestingly produced pop song. Not much else on the album sounds like it, though. Whatever.