music reviews

The Agonist
Lullabies for the Dormant Mind
3/10/09
Century Media Records
www.theagonist.net

RATING: BADASS

Century Media has quite the knack for putting out darkly delightful metalcore bands fronted by tantalizing vixens. This time it’s the sophomore effort from Montreal’s The Agonist, lead by blue-haired bombshell Alissa White-Gluz, who growls and sings. Lullabies for the Dormant Mind is a collection of morbid tales of the dreamworld, accompanied by machinegun drumming and metallic grooving – essentially the soundtrack to a Bela Lugosi film on speed. Of course, the album does succumb to a few of the pitfalls that come with being a band who embraces blue hair, chain wallets, and the other subtleties of Hot Topic sponsored teen angst, most notably with song titles like “…and their Eulogies Sang me to Sleep” and “Thank You, Pain.” However, as always, this is forgivable thanks to satisfyingly head-banging, fist-pumping musicology and a thoroughly enticing frontwoman (see: In This Moment). Izzy Cihak

***

Mirror
Mirror
www.mirror.fom

RATING: BADASS

Mirror’s debut album is a pastiche of pieces of Andy Warhol’s Factory, Weimar cabaret, and Depeche Mode intended to follow in the footsteps of Lou Reed’s Berlin and Badalamenti’s scoring of Lynch’s Twin Peaks. In other words, the most ambitiously pompous album ever released by a guy you’ve likely never heard of. However, in a Lynchian twist, the album is actually astonishing. Mirror is a multi-media project spawned by former Slow/Copyright frontman Tom Anselmi that blends playful piano pop, apocalyptic soundscapes, and delicately morbid balladry in a fashion seamless in production and concept (Trent Reznor could really use a lesson). Opening track, “Nostalgia,” uses Dave Gahan’s gently ominous vocals more effectively than even Martin Gore has since 2001’s “Goodnight Lovers.” “Nowhere” and “From No One with Love” feature the stunning work of postmodern singer/songwriter Laure-Elaine; the former her ability to write pop tunes as catchy and poignant as Kate Nash and the latter her ability to redefine the word “bleak.” “City Lights” even features a monologue by Warhol Superstar Joe Dallesandro that is akin to Burroughs’ work with Sonic Youth. In under forty minutes Anselmi presents a vast masterpiece along the lines of the soundtrack to a musical adaptation of A Clockwork Orange by Derek Jarman. Izzy Cihak

***

Revolting Cocks
Sex-O Olympic-O
3/03/09
13th Planet Records
www.revoltingcox.com

RATING: BADASS

When Revolting Cocks sing “Keeping it in the family can be a great idea,” you know that it means exactly what it sounds like. And that’s just what’s so darn loveable about them. For more than twenty years (with a decade-long gap from ’94-’04) the Al Jourgensen-led project has been creating infectiously danceable perversions under the guise of one of the greatest Industrial bands on the planet. The album, which has the band sounding as sleazy and STD-infested as ever, also embraces synthesizers, New Wave aesthetics, and that lovely brand of Pop homoeroticism that makes asses shake and rednecks squirm. “Rondo Banditos” sounds like Bauhaus remixed by KMFDM and “Touch Screen” is along the lines of Psychic TV covering the Talking Heads. The only thing missing from the collection is any of the quirkily subversive covers that they’ve become known for. Sex-O Olympic-O proves RevCo to be the only band that can make your head bang and your body rock so hard that you may momentarily forget that you’re listening to songs about watching people masturbate, celebrity porn, robot hookers, and the true origins of the human race (which has to do with hobbits fucking eight-foot-tall women). Izzy Cihak

Obi Best @ Johnny Brenda's

Obi Best
@ Johnny Brenda’s
2/22/09
www.obibest.com

“It’s always important to stretch before you drink.” This was one of many poignant and off-beat pieces of hipster jargon spouted by Alex Lilly during Obi Best’s debut in the City of Sisterly Affection. The last time Lilly made an appearance in the area was as a backup singer for brilliantly postmodern space lounge duo the Bird and the Bee during a sold out performance at Philly’s bastion of NPR sterility, World Café Live. This time around Lilly found herself presenting her own musical project to an unfortunately sparse crowd at the city’s official watering hole for the hip, Johnny Brenda’s. Obi Best’s performance was comprised of tracks from the band’s first LP, Capades. The set included songs like “Nothing Can Come Between Us,” which is along the lines of a fashionably quirky adaptation of Morrissey for a scenester musical and “Green and White Stripes,” a composition far more clever and progressive than anything to be found in the catalogue of the band who (possibly coincidentally) finds their name in the track’s title. The band’s sound hardly strays from the indie pop of the Bird and the Bee, yet lacks the range (i.e. the insatiable danceability of “I Hate Camera” against the tear-inducingly lo-fi “Spark”) to establish itself as quite as profound as the previous band. However, the both pleasantly avant-garde and accessibly chic sounds Lilly produces in Obi Best, combined with her ineffable eccentricity, will surely establish her as her own indie starlet. From the stage of Johnny Brenda’s (donning a charmingly curious pastiche of a leotard, snow boots, and clear-framed glasses) she resembled a Disney princess guest-starring in a Godard noir. Izzy Cihak

music reviews

Steve Roach/Erik Wollo
Stream of Thought
1/13/09
Projekt Records
www.steveroach.com/www.wollo.com

RATING: SEMI-OBNOXIOUS

The sounds found on Stream of Thought wouldn’t be surprising to be heard from a featured release at Digital Ferret or a budget bin compilation of Ambient Sounds for the Office from Target. The album is a collaboration of world-renowned electronic composers Steve Roach and Erik Wollo… essentially the Joe Satriani and Steve Vai of the Goth/Industrial world. The piece is presented as “a continuous stream of sonic consciousness in 19 parts,” which plays as a single, meticulously layered, soundscape. The work is, however, divided into 19 individual tracks, ranging from 37 seconds to 14 minutes and 17 seconds, for little apparent reason. At times Industrial-inspired musicality evokes intriguingly dark and paranoid imagery, although more often synthetic orchestrations of the reverberation of water provide what could be the soundtrack to an IMAX movie. The fact that the album was released by Sam Rosenthal’s Projekt Records would lead anyone with a good sense of music history to believe that there is probably actually something quite genius going on here, however, it’s doubtful that many will get whatever that is anytime soon. So it’s fairly safe to say that, unless you’re an editor at Sonic Immersion or Electroambient Space, Stream of Thought will come off sounding fairly lame and wussy. Izzy Cihak

music reviews

Circuit Theory
Amnesia

SEMI-OBNIXOUS

The title of Circuit Theory’s new album Amnesia matches symptoms you might experience after listening. Amnesia sounds like a combination of the Deftones and System of a Down with an interesting, almost eerie instrumental, Paramnesia. The short album offers minimal entertainment, but simultaneously doesn’t breach the edge of annoying either. –Kate Gamble
---

Reality Stricken
This is all we could remember . . .

SEMI-OBNOXIOUS

Tight production work brings out the towering vocals of lead singer Steve Angello, as well as the intricate backing vox of guitarist Stuart Olson and Bassist Josh Solomon; however, despite the musicianship across the board, drummer Mike Weiser and guitarist Olson are never even given the chance to display the extent of their sound. The songs themselves are nothing more than tired. This album, straight from one of Norristown’s biggest rock acts, begs the question: can’t you go any further? -Greg Bem

Music Reviews

Melora Creager
Melora a la Basilica
12/30/08
Filthy Bonnet Recording Co.
www.rasputina.com

RATING: BAD ASS

Inside a glue factory, a girl donning a corset and Victorian bloomers is holding a cello. This may sound like production notes for a David Lynch film, but it was actually the scenery which inspired the latest release from Melora Creager, whose music isn’t so far off from the transgressive postmodernism of Lynch’s cinema. Melora a la Basilica is a live album, recorded by Creager and fellow cellist Daniel DeJesus in a defunct glue factory, which combines songs from Creager’s primary band, Rasputina, with the playfully subversive covers that she has such a propensity for.

Accompanied by Rasputina, Creager’s music tends to be satirically quirky, yet without the pop sensibility that drums often add, her gently somber tales become apocalyptically haunting. While Rasputina’s pop aesthetics undermined the coldness of the traditionally Eurocentric musicality associated with cellos, this release forces the listener to confront not only that coldness, but the coldness of modern life in general, albeit in a very masochistically enjoyable manner. Rasputina’s “Wicked Dickie” and “Rose K.” are no longer sing-along-able, but chilling portraits of humanity.

Although Melora has rarely miscalculated a cover, her take on “American Girl” sounds dangerously close to the String Tribute to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers which can be found in budget bins across America. The rest of the covers, however, fail to fall victim to any clichés, including an arrangement of Goldfrapp’s “Clowns” superior to the original. The album’s highlight is an unrecognizable (and almost unlistenable) a cappella interpretation of Pearl Jam’s ode to Bill Gates, “Soon Forget,” whose horrifying echoes sound along the lines of a musical coda to Pasolini’s Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom. This can’t help but make you wonder whether Mr. Gates and the Marquis de Sade were ever really that distant. Izzy Cihak

The Pretenders @ The Electric Factory

The Pretenders
@ The Electric Factory
2/6/09
www.thepretenders.com

With The Pretenders playing Philadelphia’s Electric Factory on a Friday night, PA/NJ babysitters were in high demand on February 6th. However, with the band's latest release, Break Up the Concrete, picking up right where “The Adultress” left off, and a tour that’s an affront to the very white heteronormative suburbanism that afforded them their legacy, The Pretenders are embodying the term “badass” more fully than they have in the past two decades. And Chrissie Hynde? At 57 years-old, in skintight jeans and knee-high vinyl boots, she looked… well, still pretty damn sexy. In a nearly two-hour set revolving around themes such as S&M, genderfucking, and The Kinks, The Pretenders seemed to strip themselves of all previous ties to honky reggae, Demi Moore movies, and Lilith Fair.

Chrissie’s new live band, featuring original Pretender Martin Chambers, along with a group of young punks, gave the band’s catalogue just the audacity that had been absent on recent tours. Hynde strutted across the stage with more credible sass than any other surviving Post-Punk diva, coyly mocking those audience members shouting for songs like “Night in My Veins.” The Pretenders were out to prove that they weren't just a nostalgia band.

The band was anxious to present their latest release in a live setting, featuring their most brashly danceable songs since Learning to Crawl and the grainiest ballads Hynde has ever produced. The former of which tended to be more impressive in that particular setting (that is, a 3,000-capacity room that looks like a “futuristic” set of a 1950s B-movie, filled with people who’s last concert attended was on Journey’s summer jaunt): the reckless mod-abilly of “Boots Of Chinese Plastic” opened the evening with an almost violent rapture thought to be relegated to bands still promoting their first album, followed by “Don’t Cut Your Hair,” a could-be sequel to “Precious” that is just as fantastically juvenile as one would imagine, and the playfully primal pop of the title track that closed the set to more ass-shaking than you would expect for a song likely only 5% of the audience knew. Unfortunately, the alt. country balladry of “The Nothing Maker” and “Love’s a Mystery” were lost among the sound of hundreds of weekend warriors struggling to order $7 Budweiser’s.

Highlighting The Pretenders’ Philadelphia set were songs like “Tattooed Love Boys,” “Thumbelina,” and “The Wait,” from the days when the band still had a bit of the 100 Club in them. The set did, however, include a handful of dentist-office FM favorites, such as “Brass in Pocket” and “Back on the Chain Gang,” but the band managed to avoid “Middle of the Road” and Chrissie spruced up “Message of Love” into one of the night’s high points, with the line “Oh, it’s good, good, good, Like… Morrissey.” Of course, in 2009 the Pretenders aren’t exactly a punk band, or anything too likely to offend, but it’s pretty cool to find old-timers putting up such a convincing fight. Izzy Cihak