 by Steve McPherson
 The Notes and Scratches
Uh Oh
Tense Forms
This debut from Chicago collective Notes and Scratches comes in an unassuming enough package; it’s just chipboard with an endearing illustration of a cat riding a turtle. Leadoff track “The Hours” begins with chunky muted guitar, but the xylophone and singing saw hold forth the promise of something in the vein of pscyh-country shoegazers Mercury Rev. Seventeen seconds in, though, the drums come crashing through, and that’s when their real M.O. becomes apparent.
Broken Social Scene’s manic party vibe is present, but their closest
neighbor is the Arcade Fire, although singer Josh Dumas is a husky-throated
Tom Waits-alike, not a Bowie/Byrne disciple. The album overall is warm and friendly
and it gives the distinct impression of having been recorded with one mic in
a big empty room. “Via Satellite” is a long distance lament that’s
held aloft by a sympathetic horn section and “The Clockmaker’s Daughter”—the
highlight of the disc—is an old-fashioned marry-me song in much the same
vein as Big Ditch Road’s “Not to Me.” Taken all together it’s
not so much high lonesome as lo-fi hopeful; just the thing for playing in the
car on those winter nights riding home from the bar.
The New Standards
The New Standards
Self-Released
 Records
of non-original material can have a tough time. Depending on who you ask, Sun
Kil Moon’s album of Modest Mouse covers was either one of the 10 best
of the last year, or one of the worst. When you’re dealing with known
quantities, everybody’s got an opinion about how you handled it. The New
Standards (John Munson, bass/vocals; Chan Poling, piano/vocals; Steve Roehm,
vibraphone) have the pedigree to pull off pretty much whatever they want, and
here it’s irony-free or archly ironic (depending on how you look at it)
covers of everyone from Kurt Weill to Beck. The drummerless format leaves a
lot of room, which can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your fondness
for vibraphone. The best performances on the disc (“All the Young Dudes,”
“Man, Oh Man,” “Love is the Law”) are built on strong
melodies, and not kitsch appeal. Whether they’re intended as knowing winks
or not, the Replacements’ “I Will Dare” and Blur’s “Song
2” will either make you smile or cringe, but beyond that, you probably
won’t find yourself coming back to them. Hearing Poling transform his
own “Love is the Law” from an anthem into a wistful ode, though,
is worth the price of admission alone.
 Magnetophone
The Man Who Ate The Man
4AD
Right off the bat, let’s just all agree that’s one of the best
album titles ever. Like many of their peers, Matt Saunders and John Hanson have
a penchant for slapping unwieldly names on their compositions, which run the
gamut from the thumping dusty groove of “Kel’s Vintage Thought”
to the My Bloody Valentine-isms of “The Only Witching You’ll Be
Doing.” They collaborate with several big names, including Kim and Kelly
Deal, and the whole thing has a distinctly Postal Service vibe when the duo’s
spikily beautiful backdrops are fastened to lilting melodies on “…And
Maybe Your Last Words Be A Chance To Make Things Better” and “A
Sad Ha Ha (Circled My Demise).” I often have a hard time with albums that
split half-and-half between instrumentals and guest vocalists; they seem to
lack cohesion. Magnetophone does a good job of pulling it all together, if not
a great one. The strictly instrumental tracks can’t stand up next to the
likes of Fourtet or Boards of Canada, but the rest of the material will find
a place next to the Mobius Band in your iPod. And not just because it starts
with “M.”
Colonial Vipers Attack
Colonial Vipers Attack
Self-Released
 There
was a moment about five years ago when, all of a sudden, Jeff Buckley became
everyone’s biggest influence, from Coldplay to Muse to Chris Lee and now,
in our own little corner of the world, it seems like the Verve is becoming that
touchstone, from White Light Riot to Colonial Vipers Attack. They’re certainly
not Verve-clones like the Music, but the wah guitar on opener “Beautiful
Fall” is a dead-on duplicate of Nick McCabe’s on “Lucky Man.”
As the album unfolds, other Britpop influences like Travis (tearjerker “Sleep”)
and the Stone Roses (stomper “I Changed My Mind”) make their presence
known, but CVA do a good job of blending them all together into a convincing
whole where gently strummed acoustics sit comfortably next to curtains of fuzz.
The echoey and grungy approach to Pavlich’s vocals re-inforces this pastoral/industrial
approach and the melodies are deft enough to leave you feeling like you must
have heard this song before. That might make them seem derivative at times,
but breaking rules doesn’t always go along with breaking hearts, and that’s
exactly what they do on the plangent “A Better Place.” There’s
no reason why they can’t challenge the Athletes and Starsailors of the
world to a knifefight and come out winners. ||
|
