It’s hard to believe this is Aloha’s fifth album. Seems like just yesterday the band appeared on the scene. The band are one of those rare breeds that seem to stand on their own outside of any genre tagging. But one listen to Home Acres and you can tell this just might be Aloha at their most upbeat and most accessible. Home Acres is available from Polyvinyl with a release date of 2/26/10.
I’ll never forget the first time I heard Mogwai: it was late spring of 1999 and I was living in Toronto. I walked into Rotate This! downtown on Queen St. W to purchase Aloha’s …The Nonbelievers EP and sift through the racks for anything else of interest. CODY had just been released a while earlier and the shopkeep had what I later learned was the song Kappa pumping through the store. I remember being completely captivated by this sound that I’d never heard before. I went up to the counter with my Aloha record and asked for a copy of whatever it was that was being played. And my love for post-rock was born. As for Aloha, I don’t think I cracked the cellophane for a good week. It was all Mogwai all the time. CODY, still to this day, gets its fair share of rotation and remains one of my favorite albums of all time.
Ten years and hundreds of records later, cue up Austin’s latest post-rock wonder-group The Calm Blue Sea.
The reason for my little Mogwai story is this: I couldn’t tell you when, where, or how I first came across The Calm Blue Sea. I remember being completely taken by the album’s interplay between massive and minuscule, but can recall little else. Seems anti-climactic in comparison, which is exactly my point. I fell for this album hard at first — like a horned up college kid stricken with puppy love for a bar nymph. I was even ready to offer toast the next morning. But once the sun rose and the blood alcohol returned to normal levels, so to speak, I couldn’t help but feel that I wasn’t the first to have been so easily seduced.
Don’t get me wrong — this is a stunning debut from a band that I absolutely look forward to hearing more from in the future. They’ve built upon the template laid before them by their Austin contemporaries Explosions in the Sky so perfectly, that I dare say they actually sound better at times. But that’s precisely the problem for me. Everything I hear on the album is familiar in one way or another — like I’ve owned it for years and am just blowing off the dust after a lengthy recess. It’s unfair, really. Songs of this caliber deserve better.
The Calm Blue Sea have shown me with this release that they are more than capable of producing near textbook examples of everything a post-rock record should aspire to be. What’s missing is that certain signature, that identifiable nuance to elevate The Calm Blue Sea from exemplary to essential. Whatever that may be, I sincerely hope that we all find it on subsequent installments from the band because one thing is for certain — rarely is anyone ever remembered for writing textbooks.
Genre: Post-Rock
RIYL: Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, Mono, etc.
Label: Self-Released
After The Legions
In the midst of the high-definition, words per minute and frames per second lives we lead, it’s easy to forget that it’s the things we don’t say that often leave the most lasting impressions. No matter our language or vocabulary, it’s the non-verbal cues and clues we give that unravel all the words to unmask our true intentions or dispositions. The most poignant of speeches can be reduced to mere background chatter by an unkempt appearance and anemic voice. Staring at her tits while complimenting her wit…you see what I mean.
Music is much the same way. Assuming the shoegaze position for an entire live set can crumble even the biggest wall of sound. Many otherwise great songs have been ruined by the likes of an amateur vocalist, and vice versa. McAllen, Texas’ They Mean Us side-step at least one of the above pitfalls and prove themselves as masters of the unspeakable. Their titanic album Friendship Lottery is truly one of the great communicators in the Instrumental genre that is tarnished by repetition, imitation, and for some, stagnation.
Typical to the genre, They Mean Us take a little longer to get their point across (“Pickle Seals” is the shortest of the six tracks clocking in just shy of the four minute mark), but by no means overstay their welcome. Rather than spend needless bars crafting celestial crescendo, They Mean Us rely on deft shifts of theme, tempo, style and perspective to draw the listener in. The sheer grace of it all is what keeps you there. Whimsical, That’s Your Fire era Aloha-esque vibraphone phrases, intricate American Football style guitar picking, rolling prog-rock bass lines, warm cello and tasteful electronics: Friendship Lottery takes the best elements of the past decade of music, fuses them, layers it, and executes it perfectly.
They Mean Us and Friendship Lottery bring to the table a peerless brand of post-ish rock without the drama, and math-rock without the geometrics. It’s less filling, and tastes great.
Genre: Instrumental/Math-Rock
RIYL: Toe, The Six Parts Seven, Dinomania
Label: Self-Released/Look Again Media
Dan Mason
Know Think’s four song demo is a varied mixture of emo stylings. First song, “Aeroplanes” echoes the smooth sound of modern bands like Look Mexico as well as owing a debt to the great American Football (but of course). Middle tracks, “Craftwork Creatures” and “Cutting Signs,” are a bit more aggressive in their approach. These songs give nods to all the usual suspects (Cap ‘n Jazz, Braid) and are reminiscent of their current peers as well. But it is the seven minute closer, “Songo,” that seemingly pushes the envelope a little more. Sounding closer to the the expansive work of Aloha, Know Think show a willingness to move beyond genre norms. Still, all four tracks remain tied together by a wonderfully warm and intricate mood. Know Think’s mature sound defies their youthful age. Let’s hope this is only the beginning.
Genre: Emo/Indie/Rock
RIYL: American Football, Aloha, Look Mexico
Label: Self-Released
Aeroplanes
