Three Imaginary Girls - Seattle's sparkly indie-pop press

Fear Fun

Chris Estey — Tue, 01 May 2012 17:40:17 +0000

http://www.amazon.com/Fear-Fun-Father-John-Misty/dp/B007IPAOJW/?tag=wwwthreeimagi-20

How does a Seattle boy deal with a deliberating dose of depression and then some newfound creative sparks in Los Angeles? (J./Joshua) Tillman {formerly of the Fleet Foxes} shows a gripping, glistening way how on his debut as Father John Misty, Fear Fun. It involves a lot of reading Beats and bards and bohemian travel writers; writing reams of visions and observations and humiliating admissions; listening to a whole lot of great albums from the later Vietnam era created by PTSD-shaken troubadours; perfervidly working on demos with producer/singwriter comrade Jonathan Wilson, and bringing on board Phil Ek to help mix it. Also: treehouse living with spiders, Canadian Shamans who share a little too much intoxicant, Adderall and weed otherwise, a lot of funerals, fumbling drinks, and novels needing to be written as one lives life like a "You take your chances here, pal" roller coaster.

It's tempting to hang it all on the inspiration of Laurel Canyon, the scene where Wolf Kings of the Hills wither in manses face down in champagne-drenched mink. Tillman ended up there, and it has not only resurrected the creativity of a drummer-loner in a highly successful but probably very hard-to-be-heard-in band, but also given the world a full-length that will make many best-ofs this year (just wait and watch). Besides that, for those who find other bands under the CSNY-dew sparkling umbrella gimmicky and merely lovely at best, Tillman's truly glorious vocals, completely unpredictable lyrics, and joyfully creative multi-layered music is probably going to convert many on the sidelines of this genre.

At least to this album, which kicks off with three extremely gripping and gorgeous odes to absurd existential decline, "Funtimes In Babylon," "Nancy From Now On," and "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings." All of them are absolute jewels, and worthy of high-charting action. But what makes this an essential purchase for anyone with even a mild enjoyment of arty folk-rock are hilarious character studies such as "I'm Writing A Novel," the Rodriguez-rhythmic "Well, You Can Do It Without Me," and the Phil Ochs-style talking blues "Now I'm Learning To Love The War."

About the only thing that bothers me on Fear Fun is the banal backbeat to one of its best songs, the otherwise perfect "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings," and that's only because the percussion elsewhere is otherwise so exquisite. Considering it was a drummer who made that call, I have to consider it an on-purpose crack in a cavalcade of crisply created and recorded inside jokes about the end of the New Age and the continuing time loop of being stuck in life during wartime. A life spent drunkenly dancing around the graves of loved ones and enemies, trying to find romance when everything in this graveyard is so fucking foggy.

{Father John Misty plays Neumos on Monday, May 7th. Advance tickets available here.}

Valentina

Andrew Boe — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:54:36 +0000

http://www.amazon.com/Valentina-Wedding-Present/dp/B00748FSXK/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1333299084&sr=1-1

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For an artist as prolific as David Gedge is, with nearly thirty years' recording history under his belt, it is a bit strange to think that the new Wedding Present album, Valentina, is only the band's eighth studio record. Of course, there are numerous singles, EPs, and live albums as well, not to mention the wonderful and underrated albums released by his other project, Cinerama. With that in mind, this is probably closer to being his twelfth full-length studio LP. To be candid, a new release by Gedge is always welcome, however, the more enthralling news is that The Wedding Present is currently on tour in the US playing their 1991 masterpiece, Seamonsters, in it's entirety. The band will be performing in Seattle at The Crocodile this Friday, April 6th. This show is highly recommended as Seamonsters is an incredible record containing everything that a magnum opus should: pain, animus, regret, melancholy, fear, betrayal, doubt, grit and fire. In other words: it is an emotionally bare recording, effectively projecting the sheer essence of longing and heartache that few have managed to capture.

Valentina finds the Wedding Present well beyond the circle of angst that surrounded Gedge in 1991. The subject matter of failed relationships and a double-standard perspective remains the same, but the cathartic motivation behind disconnected love has been absent for a while. 2005's lovely Take Fountain still had it and then the following album, El Rey, felt rather removed from veritable turmoil. Valentina follows suit with more humor and less personal discord. The lead single, "You Jane," is a sprightly, jangling number that is catchy, but cannot be compared to the spleen of a song like "Kennedy." There are some beautiful moments interspersed throughout though. The introduction to "Mystery Date" is quite somber, sounding reminiscent of Cinerama. When the accompanying instruments join in, Gedge sings "This does not happen to me," with conviction. There is also some ragged electric lead guitar on this song. It just seems that these moments are becoming fewer on the recent records.

Contrarily, Seamonsters is a scorching affair. The poignant "Dalliance" rages with incendiary electricity. The track builds and builds until a final culmination of exploding guitars and cannon drums ignite from inside it's viscera. "Carolyn" is one of the album's greatest tracks. The poppy guitar and drum combination are catchy, but in a somewhat mournful manner. And then there is the angry outro guitar section, one of the best moments of their career, which sounds a bit like The Velvet Underground. In the album's closing track, "Octopussy," the piercing anguish in Gedge's voice when he sings "You don't take away my hand, like you ought to/You've become my family/I don't want to understand why I need you/You've just become my family," sends shivers down the spine. In between, there are several other indispensable songs as well. It is certainly their dark and disquieting apex.

With these two records, distributed from differing ages and perspectives, The Wedding Present will treat the audience to a range of their repertoire on Friday evening. David Gedge has always had the ability to make you laugh one moment and then cry the next. This is one of these reasons why his music has been so intoxicating over the years. Commiseration is sometimes your only friend, and The Wedding Present is a band that anyone who has ever loved and lost can embrace with uncanny abandon.

Let's Quit

Chris Estey — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:30:11 +0000

9.5

http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Quit/dp/B007IKVJQE/?tag=wwwthreeimagi-20

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djblesOne and Emecks are part of Seattle's LOVE FAMILY, internationally known shrewd vocalists and dancers and crowd-picadors who blend bubblegum skank pop, VICE Don'ts, Grand Royal Magazine B-boy spreads, jokes about serial killers set in noir satires, love for KEXP nerd punk girls in knee high boots, corndogs with firecrackers in the middle and deep-fried in nerve-stoking thick crystal weed-rap.

With deep-swizzled DJ (and fellow Mash Hall brother) El Mizell, their full length Don't Talk to the Cops! non-viral debut album Let's Quit sounds at times like a really messed up Rolling Stones jam from 1975 ("Murder Burger"), its DNA mutated with the Flying Lizards and Pussy Galore, bles sputtering like an Irish American Pogue raised on Too Short and the Beach Boys. These aren't frat kids with a clothing line, these are trailer park jesters who just robbed the pharmacy and are living like Seattle Scarfaces. Emecks' smart-ass, surreal verbal bumper stickers would sound perfect on the back of a Manson family dune buggy parked out side Laurel Canyon. It's sunny as being in LA on a card counting back room gambling bender and only grim if you weaken. The drum machines never stop hitting you in the face and funny bone, from "Hey ... Don't Eat Those" to "Buy Me Drinks!" to "Tattoo My Name." It's like the world never changed after License To Ill, but just kept getting better for the punks.

This is a dense splattering of inside jokes, jacked up xylophone joy, so much swag it spills over when the neighbors walk by. It is infectious and as deep as the first Ramones album, that is if the OC Notes could have guested on it as well and there was one less song about being a knife-wielding male hustler. Buy this CD or you will have to do jury duty at their trials; oh hell you probably will have to anyways. Only thing missing is a big old ballad like "I Need Love." Or a satire of it. But I don't want to give these art-terrorists any ideas or anything. They got plenty of their own up there, swimming like Coney island whitefishes.

Father Creeper

Chris Estey — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 15:30:31 +0000

8.2

http://www.amazon.com/Father-Creeper-Spoek-Mathambo/dp/B006YTLMA8/?tag=wwwthreeimagi-20

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Spoek Mathambo's Father Creeper may be the sleeper of the year. It is disguised as world stew glitch brew, but its album cover somehow perfectly captures both the sturdiness and destruction: A glistening facade of a corporate building reflecting a fire and sinister Nomadic tribe leaving an accident or attack. In the face of the future, the mystery of the past destroys.

South African rapper-singer-gizmo grifter Mathambo has been criticized for relentlessness and lyrical jackassery in his mix of rock, hip-hop, and all those things rock and hip-hop fans can't easily identify. Sure, there's crunk bass and Krautrock squiggles surrounding lyrically rude and mocking low life rebellion ("We Can Work"), which actually reminds me quite a bit of a Black Rock version of best aspects of the first Shabazz Palaces EP (the self-titled one, not Of Light). It's all about shirking work and digging whatever cake is called down in SA. "Let Them Talk" is a bass-petting lost Fishbone-style ode to bodies ramping and flanks bouncing and shaking, and would have been a perfect fit on that punk-soul-ska band's best lost 80s LP. The rest shows flashes of brilliances, from the piano-dub of the title track and the leering musical tracers of "Venison Fingers."

Here's the hook: Mathambo is a trueblood trickster, the eternal slacker who just wants to play and mess with the minds of TV babies a bit. He's liable to pick up and lay down an instrument before constructing a song, but sometimes your favorite albums are like that. The use of lots of guest stars on vocals and etc. definitely double-track the Sandinista!-music-as-collective-trouble-funk vibe. If you enjoy Tuneyards but can't hang this far back near the jungle gyms, maybe you shouldn't come this far into the city for a playground.

Put Your Back N 2 It

Chris Estey — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 20:22:56 +0000

http://www.amazon.com/Put-Your-Back-Perfume-Genius/dp/B006GH6HSK/?tag=wwwthreeimagi-20

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This album, Perfume Genius's second, sounds like a still-moment widescreen car-crash at first -- a horrifying accident beautifully caught by gleaming, descending keys and soft male siren voice. "AWOL Marine" is Mike Hadreas at his most ethereal, the art of ghosting other lost souls musicalized. Put Your Back N 2 It then smokes out that slive of a song, and another reed-thin fragment flickers by: "Normal Song," with more lyrics about nursing the chronic, swooning over the sick, but this time, for the first time for PG, it's gently croaked over twangy acoustic guitar.

The third, "No Tear," is when Antony of Antony & The Johnstons comes in for a bit of a duet, in which the suffering abides by grace. And then Mike's own voice sounds even more like Art Garfunkel's -- which presents a problem. The rest of the album is inarguably gorgeous, full of resignation yet pulling out of black despair. But there's no tough Paul Simon stoicism, embrace of worldly anxiety to rise above.

Perfume Giant's first album, Learning, was a dusty padded manilla package full of brokenness sent by a friend at the end of their rope. It was filled with musical doodles that haunted, transcending the tags of "Xiu Xiu rock" from so many who weep out these wispy keyboard/drum machine-type threnodies. The delight was in the details: The weed-smoking and sharing older boyfriend who jumped off a building and left him a cassette tape of Joy Division, the household substances in place of alcohol impulsively consumed by family members, etc.

Put Your Back N 2 It is about musical vocabulary, not lyrical observations. It's basically a gospel album for those bullied by reality, tortured by gender choices, extinguished by love. I adore it but it doesn't pop out of the mails with black humor and Sharpee drawings, mix tape shared misery. It is behind the glass, face fixed forever in a forlorn grin of sadness and well, sadness. A little bit more humor, less preoccupation with lushness, and I may have been inspired to write this review a month ago. Beauty should never be this hard of a slog, but I don't deny that PG's follow up is indeed a beautiful creation.