LAWN KNIVES | Gobble Gobble

WE ALL GOT CLOTHES: Yeah okay, so Gobble Gobble has joined the ranks of some of the strangest named groups around. But listen to the track “Lawn Knives” below. It’s hard-pounding, anthemic and full of fuzzed out sythn, skittered beats and catchy vocals. It’s such a fun track. Visit the Gobbler Gobbler tumblr page, where you can order a 7″ of the song released through Royal Rhino Flying Records out of West Virginia. Note: Photo taken by Landon Speers. – David D. Robbins Jr.

Gobble Gobble “Lawn Knives”

A MOODY-BLUE BLAZE | Seabear

WARMING TREND: Seabear, a seven-piece Icelandic band, softly swirl their hushed powers around the voice of lead singer Sindri Már Sigfússon. The band will release its 11-track sophomore effort, “We Built a Fire” sometime soon, as a follow-up to 2007′s “The Ghost That Carried Us Away”. It’s no wonder the new album was recorded in the band’s basement studio, with apple-carton covered walls built to keep out the sounds of the world. It’s an intimate bedroom affair. In a way, listening to this album feels a bit like eavesdropping. You’ve heard the old cliched question, “Does a tree falling in the woods make a sound if no one is there to hear it?” This is an album that puts the question to rest. It does. “We Built a Fire” feels distilled — created without worrying about whether or not there are listeners. It simply is. Some could argue the tracks carry the same tone throughout. In terms of a movie, it could be said this album lacks plot development. But it also couldn’t be made any other way. Too much change or dissonance would kill the mood. Much like building a fire, it takes some patience to get it going. And if you put enough effort into it — you’ll be around for the blaze to come. “We Built a Fire” is rich with pretty experimental melodies, harmonies and strings. One of the best cuts, “Fire Dies Down” starts off with piano, a sullen saw and accordion — which leads into these lush lyrics sung with crumbling fragility, “A fire dies down / Carrying death into the house / Un-close your eyes / Let it all glow / One day this body will break / One day these hands will shake.” – Words by David D. Robbins Jr.

SPACEY UNDERWORLD | Secret Cities

SHHHHH!: Secret Cities’ two tracks are harder to pin down than mercury. The songs sound like something familiar, only to transition into something else. Like the xx, Secret Cities seem to mix the best of 80s old-school with new-school instrumentation. The band creates dark synth-pop, ethereal dreamscapes of white noise, found sounds, slick grooves, extended synth notes, and whispered falsetto in compositions that evolve, twist, turn and deconstruct throughout. It’s a wonder their two released tracks sound so clean, with so much musical collage going on. North Dakota’s Secret Cities started out with founders Charlie Gokey and Marie Parker sending 4-track cassette tapes back and forth to each other across the length of the state. Each would add their own parts or manipulate the others’ work until they carved out dark, multi-layered gems. Later, they added drummer Alex Abnos, frontman for his Kansas City freewheeling, computer-blip bopping, ukulele-loving band Tut Tut. (Listen to his tracks “Over/Under (CEEGO remix)” or “Pins on Purse”. They’re gorgeous.) Secret Cities lists on their MySpace Page,  minimalist composer Terry Riley, as an influence. It’s easy to hear his spacey computerized repetitions in the foundation of Secret Cities’ two tracks. The band recently signed to Austin, Texas record label, Western Vinyl — home of J. Tillman, The Dirty Projectors, and Balmorhea. Secret Cities released a digital double A-side (Bright Teeth/Pink Graffiti Pt. 1) to be followed by a debut LP, “Pink Graffiti”, in June. If you listen to Riley, Tut Tut and Secret Cities, somehow it all begins to make sense how this trio connect and evolved into the unique style they have. Without a doubt, this is a band to watch. – Artwork and words by David D. Robbins Jr.

Secret Cities “Pink Graffiti Pt. 1″

LOVE AND DESIRE | Sean Hayes

A LOOK AT SEAN HAYES
Artwork & Words by David D. Robbins Jr.
Upcoming Album: Run Wolves Run •  Release Date: March 2, 2010
(Artwork uses web photo and elements from Hayes’ album covers)

It’s too bad San Francisco-based singer-songwriter Sean Hayes isn’t better known, because he’s been one of the best musicians in America for some time now. In a fair world, Hayes’ sixth album, “Run Wolves Run”, would be an early candidate for album of the year.

On “Run Wolves Run”, this master crooner manages to infuse his amorous side with a jolt of the carnal — giving glimpse into the raw, urgent, desirous side of love. If the yearning in “All For Love” was a smooth brandy, than this is a 21-year-old Bushmills elixir. His tales of “epic romance gone astray” mix with more flesh-charged songs like “So Down” — where Hayes sings out to a lover, “Put on your high heels and give it to me, baby. Ohhhhhhhhhaaaaa! Put on your high heels, and nothing else.” Melodic Wurlitzer, driving crisp drums, and siren noises build into a frenetic shirt-tearing, skirt-ripping, sweaty, skin-to-skin steamfest — that would even move gutbucket crowds to dance as if they were listening to Willie Dixon’s “Spoonful”. Hayes rocks out on one of the album’s best tracks, “Gunnin’”:

RABBIT REDUX | Frightened Rabbit

Artwork & Words by David D. Robbins Jr.
HIGHLAND SPIRITS: There’s no doubt this Glasgow five-piece band are trying for a fuller, heavier sound on their third album, “The Winter of Mixed Drinks”. (U.S. release date, March 9, 2010) It’s the kind of album intended to fill stadiums with strong hooks, melodies and old-fashioned rock-outs. Frightened Rabbit have created a chord-heavy, anthemic record that will certainly catapult this Scotland favorite into the mainstream, if that’s what they want.

THE POIGNANT PIXIE | Joanna Newsom

ON JOANNA NEWSOM
Artwork & Words by David D. Robbins Jr.
Album: Have One On Me •  Release Date: February 23, 2010

“Have One On Me,” is the massive orchestral third album from Joanna Newsom, known for her virtuoso harp-playing, oddball lyrics and a strange pixie-esque voice that’s made some listeners wish they were rather chewing glass. Newsom can be an acquired taste. Her songs are filled with images both childlike and oddly creepy, like some folk-indie Alice in Wonderland. Newsom’s world contains visions of wicker beetle-shells, pine-combs, and ominous make-believe cities. She forms narratives where one may find a pot of gold or a queen demanding in crimson anger, “Off with her head!”

Her first album, “The Milk-Eyed Mender” contained arcane and strange topics, oddly assembled like the glitterings of a Victorian London junk shop. Like some literary logorrheaic, Newsom poured out a litany of uniquely paired adjectives and topics — mattresses tense like muscles, a Texan’s meaty mitts, inflammatory writs, fallible ships and dissolving bats. She has even performed a version of Scottish poet Robert Burns’ song, ” Ca The Yowes Tae The Knowes.”

TRUE LOVE | Hole

A LOOK AT COURTNEY LOVE’S “REHAB DEMOS”
Artwork & Words by David D. Robbins Jr.
Upcoming Album: Nobody’s Daughter •  Announced Release Date: April 27, 2010
(Illustration made with use of photo from unknown source or photographer.)

Rock and roll lightning-rod Courtney Love is about as appealing as a swig of hemlock for some. For others, she’s a thrashingly sweet pixie with a voice that swings from swoon to switchblade. To some she’ll always be that crazy nutjob who stole Kurt Cobain’s songs, freaked out on OxyContin or who often appears make-up smeared and disheveled — barely holding herself together. But her fans are more sympathetic. To them, Love is a vulnerable beauty donning butterfly wings and baby-doll dresses, mesmerizing an audience with one leg cocked up on a speaker box, delivering a guttural “Violet” from someplace beautifully nihilistic, deep, dark and sad: “Go on, take everything, take everything! I want you to! / Go on, take everything! Take everything! I want you to!”

UNIFIED FIELD THEORY | Massive Attack

WELCOME TO HELIGOLAND: Trip-hop’s biggest studs, Massive Attack, are back with their first LP in seven years, “Heligoland” — named for an island situated in the North Sea. The island is known for being a bomb-testing ground for the British Royal Navy after World War II.

“Heligoland” (release date Feb. 9, 2010) feels like the masters of  gloomy chords and hellish bass grooves have returned to what made them the musical standard. It’s not that the album sounds like any of its predecessors. It doesn’t sound like “Mezzanine” or “Protection”. But it’s the moodiness and experimentation that is quintessential Massive Attack. It’s the moving away from the cinematic sounds of 2003′s “100th Window” and back to a gutter-soaked worldliness. A real-world grit smeared across heavy grooves and unexpected musical transitions.

The first track “Pray For Rain”, featuring TV On the Radio singer Tunde Adebimpe, “brings the black back” to Massive Attack — as founding member Grant “Daddy G” Marshall said he would. He may have been joking, referring to race as opposed to mood — but it sounds like both are back. The song moves darkly through low dub, wicked piano, African drum beats, and these lyrics tinged with sulfur and brimstone:

“In deepest hollow of our minds. / A system failure left behind. / And their necks crane, / As they turned to pray for rain. / Dull residue of what once was. / A shattered cloud of swirling doves. / And their eyes changed, / As they learned to see through flames. / And their necks craned, / As they turned to pray for rain.”

The track “Flat of the Blade” soothes with computerized bleeps, synth-drums in reverb  — with vocals sung by Guy Garvey. It’s a song that sounds a lot like David Bowie.

For those that don’t know, Massive Attack is the Bristol, England duo Marshall and Robert “3D” Del Naja. They’re an ensemble band, featuring guest singers on a majority of their tracks. They’ve worked with Sinead O’Connor, Tracey Thorn (Everything But the Girl), David Bowie, and Mos Def. “Heligoland” features Martina Topley Bird (who has worked with Tricky), Damon Albarn (Blur and Gorrilaz frontman) and the husky-voiced Horace Andy.

“Heligoland” came about in a strange fashion. Daddy G says that he and Del Naja were working in separate studios on an album called “Weather Underground” — putting their creations together and going on tour with the results. Both became bored with the music and stripped it down and began re-working in Albarn’s studio. They created news sounds, new songs and made the music more cohesive.

“Splitting the Atom”, the third track on the album, showcases the band’s trademark supernatural elegance, with deep, thumping organ and hand claps before moving into a beautiful slacker hip-hop vocal delivery:

“Incandescent light at doors / In adolescent menopause / In little clicks you got the music stops / The needle sticks and the penny drops / The summer’s gone before you know / The muffled drums of relentless flow / You’re looking at stars that give you vertigo / The sun’s still burning and dust will blow / Honey scars, I’ll keep you near / Our blood is gold, nothing to fear / We killed the time and I love you dear / A kiss of wine, we’ll disappear / The last of the last particles / Divisible invisible.”

One of best tracks on the album, “Paradise Circus” (apparently named for a roundabout) seduces with intermittent and alternating bass beats, symphonic violins, and the sexiest vocals  Hope Sandoval (Mazzy Star) has ever delivered. The band released a video for the song (explicit material) featuring legendary porn star Georgina Splevin. The 73-year-old starred in the adult movie, “The Devil in Miss Jones” in 1973 — and reminisces about her role in the movie and what she loves about sex, seduction and film. – Art and words by David D. Robbins Jr. (“Heligoland” album art manipulated)

Massive Attack “Pray For Rain”