“Hey Jane” recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, October 11^th 2011

A couple of weeks ago Spiritualized visited the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh, ready to promote a new album already delayed until next spring. Most of the scheduled tour dates have been postponed until March, but us Scots were lucky to avoid such a fate. I bought my pint to the strains of Malcolm Mooney-era Can on the PA and got comfy in the Upper Circle. Eventually Spiritualized filed onstage – Jason Spaceman stage right, sitting on an office chair facing the band; Doggen and John Coxon on guitar; two anonymous figures on bass and keyboards (sorry for not knowing your names, skilled musicians!), Kevlar Bales on drums and two gospel singers as backup. My palms were sweating with anticipation. Yes, I’m a confirmed Spiritualized acolyte, and I was ready to accept anything the Spaceman threw my way.

I wasn’t expecting this, though.

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The third release from Portland’s Point Juncture, WA, titled Handsome Orders comes out May 17th (on Mt. Fuji records). This album doesn’t sound home-recorded by any means, with it’s lush and airy production and dynamic energy bringing each track to very specific and impressive life. This album is a little more forward-moving than what I would call “dream pop” but I get why they draw that tag: delicate boy/girl vocal interplay, reverby blips and drones behind the regular mix of drums and guitars, etc. Not all of this album sticks with me, but it’s high points are spectacular. For fans of Belle and Sebastian, Lake, and the like. Another really good album from this Pac-NW band. Their 2009 release, Heart To Elk, is worth digging into also, if you are new to this band.

Recommended tracks: the beautiful “Snakey Says” and the album’s energy high-point “Boston Gold”

St. Thomas, the debut album from The Scottish Enlightenment, is a project that seems born out of the frozen wastelands of Caledonia’s East Coast. That’s not to say that this is a cold record: quite the opposite, in fact (well, mostly). But it’s an album which has the rare quality of capturing the cold purity of a bright, chilly day on the Scottish coast.

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I decided to write this review based on the strength of the single “Wet and Dripping” from promising Pacific Northwesterners Aan (pronounced “on”). After 90 seconds of sparse pitch singing, light guitar arpeggios, electronic ambience and slight gradual increases in tempo, all delicate and floaty, W&D punches you in the face with a howling, thumping rager. I thought the long, delicate intro was a pretty incredible psych-out. But it wasn’t. It was the truth. After Aan get the fire out of their system, their EP, I Could Be Girl For You, blossoms into lush and charming psych-folk, at times swampy and twangy, and altogether charming/ambient. Track to track, the songs dramatically vary in mood and length and more than once move between song-sections with moments of silence, like they are suites instead of verses and choruses. The EP really succeeds due to the environment that each song builds, by way of lo-fidelity charm, room feel, and stuttering electronics. It is a perfect palette for the bi-polar folk and psychedelic nuances (including a surprising amount of high-in-the-mix bird sounds). The EP is also full of compelling vocal performances by band founder Bud Wilson, who seems to travel easily between a whisper and yelp.

Standout track “Toy” is the best culmination of the different things the EP has to offer, and features a lot of awesome, teen-mean lyrics.

RIYL: The Robot Ate Me/Ryland Bouchard, Atlas Sound

MP3: Aan – ‘Wet and Dripping’

Marnie Stern’s bag of tricks is not a secret. By now, in her musical adventure, we know what weapons she brings to the fight. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that Marnie destroys a guitar, tapping her way through labyrinthian passes across the fretboard. You also know to expect those guitar lines to weave around hyperactive, impressive drumming. What is a mystery is how Marnie continues to just do what she does and somehow keep it totally fresh. In the world of vituoso guitarists, what you usually get is long, meandering jerk-off albums. Instead of putting us to sleep with her unbelievable talent, Marnie once again employs it to fashion an album where her incontestable chops, soaring hooks, deceptive time signatures, and wild energy all play into a master plan, the result of which is another truly fun, emotionally charged album.

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O’Death’s newest album comes out today and despite our love for their first two, after one listen, Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin has hands down become our favorite. It has a more maturing sound which takes the band’s dark undertones out into the open with haunting and demanding string, intriguing lyrics and an overall sense of doom and foreboding which still ends up to be an album to listen to over and over to, with songs, which seen live, require their signature dancing and whooping.

One of our favourite tracks is actually the free ‘Low Tide’ with it’s frenetic pace and picked at violin strings. ‘Fire on Peshtigo’, is the first track where you really hear singer Greg Jamie’s vocals: an insistent vibrato that you end up missing on the following song but comes back later in the album. We are also a fan of the halted waltz ‘Mountain Shifts,’ it reminds us of ghouls dancing on Halloween. The musical shift that ‘Angeline’ makes for the band also stands out. ‘Angeline’ is a song you might even hear early John Denver or Dolly Parton sing in some of their darkest hours, two of our favourite singer songwriters of all time, has made this our most listened to track off the album.

O’Death is one of our favourite acts to see live, we’ll be checking them out Thursday in Brooklyn and suggest you do the same:

O’DEATH TOUR DATES
October 30 – Music Hall Of Williamsburg – Brooklyn, NY
October 31 – Johnny Brenda’s – Philadelphia, PA
November 1 – Johnny Brenda’s – Philadelphia, PA
November 2 – T.T. The Bears – Cambridge, MA
November 3 – II Motore – Montreal, QUE
November 4 – El Mocambo – Toronto, ONT
November 5 – Mohawk Place – Buffalo, NY
November 6 – Beachland Ballroom – Cleveland, OH
November 7 – Jakes Nightclub – Bloomington, IN
November 8 – Empty Bottle – Chicago, IL
November 9 – Hideout – Chicago, IL
November 10 – 7th Street Entry – Minneapolis, MN
November 11 – The Picador – Iowa City, IA
November 12 – The Jackpot Saloon – Lawrence, KS
November 13 – Waiting Room – Omaha, NE
November 14 – Larimer Lounge – Denver, CO
November 15 – Urban Lounge – Salt Lake City, UT
November 17 – Media Club – Vancouver, BC
November 18 – High Dive – Seattle, WA
November 19 – Doug Fir Lounge – Portland, OR
November 20 – Jambalaya – Arcata, CA
November 21 – Bottom Of The Hill – San Francisco, CA
November 22 – Spaceland – Los Angeles, CA
November 23 – Casbah – San Diego, CA
November 24 – Modified Arts – Phoenix, AZ
November 26 – The Mohawk – Austin, TX
November 28 – Marquee – Tulsa, OK
November 29 – Off Broadway – St. Louis, MO
November 30 – Hi-Tone Café – Memphis, TN
December 2 – The Earl – Atlanta, GA
December 3 – Local 506 – Chapel Hill, NC
December 4 – Black Cat Backstage – Washington, DC

Official Website
O’Death on Myspace
O’Death on Imeem
Kemado Records

MP3: O’Death – Lowtide