The Awkward World

Remember when I did that mid-year best-of post a few months ago? I gave a very positive review to Outer South by Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band. Apparently people in famous bands like it when I say nice things about them, so I was contacted by a San Fransisco group called AM Magic, which shares a member with the Mystic Valley Band. In my Outer South review, I said the non-Conor-Oberst singer-songwriters were a mixed bag, but Nik Freitas’ tracks on that album were consistently strong, so I jumped at the chance to review AM Magic’s new record, Magique Concrete.

Magique Concrete is the kind of indie pop you hear a lot around a college campus, which is to say lo-fi, stripped down, discordant, and generically pretty. The songs work best when they slow down and get shoegazy, like on “Blue Timbre” and “Make It Right,” but the album itself doesn’t quite have a through-line, a unifying factor that defines a body of work rather than a group of friends dicking around on their instruments. Despite a self-serious, undeveloped sound and some creativity issues with the lyrics, I liked the album overall, especially in its second half. It reminds me of Jets to Brazil or the kind of stuff Saddle Creek/Team Love used to release ten years ago, and my favorite songs from Magique Concrete – “Aeroplane” and the aforementioned “Make It Right” – are sincere and fun, and a little more ambitious than the rest of the album. That’s what I think AM Magic lacks as a whole: ambition. I would love to see where this band can go when they stop playing the kind of stuff WXYC in Chapel Hill would gobble up and really start looking for art, or emotion, or energy, or whatever it is they haven’t quite found. Have some fun, people, and your music will start to reflect it.

AM Magic – Aeroplane

AM Magic – Make It Right

This is as good a time as any to tell you all about my new submission policy. AM Magic sent me a free download of Magique Concrete and asked me to review it for them. I really like free music. So if your band would like to be reviewed on Awkward World, send me a digital or hard copy of your record (email me for my address), and I will review it, and unlike with AM Magic (sorry AM Magic) I will do so in a timely-ish manner. So start mailing me CD’s, people. Seriously.

In other news, we have new or upcoming releases from some of my all-time favorite bands. I picked up the new Lacuna Coil, Shallow Life, with lowered expectations. Their 2006 major label debut, Karmacode, was disappointing, and rarely does a band make a few terrific albums on a small label, then grow older and get a sucky break into the mainstream, then revert back to making terrific albums. Sadly, I was right. Lacuna Coil now records glossy, shiny, metal-type songs with all the darkness and feeling carefully polished out. Shallow Life has too many orchestral ballads and thumping, alternative-rock-radio-ready singles, and not enough screamy/beautiful gothic metal, which is the whole reason to listen to Lacuna Coil in the first place. Their first three full-lengths – In a Reverie, Unleashed Memories, and Comalies – are the wildly melodramatic standard-bearers of what European goth-metal should sound like, and those records absolutely deserve their cult following. I worshiped at the altar of vocalist/Italian sex goddess Cristina Scabbia for all my high school days, but I think it might be time to blow out the incense and move on. Alas.

Lacuna Coil – Wide Awake (from Shallow Life, 2009)

Lacuna Coil – My Wings (from In a Reverie, 1999; this is one of my favorite songs of all time, ever.)

Lacuna Coil – Stars (from Unleashed Memories/Half-Life split, 2001)

Lacuna Coil – Entwined (from Comalies, 2002)

But there’s good news too! Lucero’s new LP, 1372 Overton Park, is perhaps their best album to date, and that’s saying a whole hell of a lot. This self-described “country-ish” band is best known for their raucous live shows, driving heartland rock, and the gravelly, Replacements-by-way-of-Springsteen vocals of frontman Ben Nichols (can you tell what kind of music I like or what?). Nichols’ solo EP earlier this year, The Last Pale Light in the West, made my mid-year top ten, but the energy and heart of Overton Park lays to waste pretty much his whole catalogue. Though I’m still drawn to their rambling, scruffy early work, it’s the more streamlined, southern rock flair that began on 2004’s That Much Further West that really makes Lucero stand out. They’ve added a horn section this time around for a full, whiskey-soaked, Memphis sound, and Nichols’ emotive yowling is in top form. This sounds like a very personal record, and one which took a lot of work to pull off. You can appreciate 1372 Overton Park for yourself when it’s released on October 6, but the first single, “Smoke,” is now available on iTunes. Here’s that song, plus my favorite from their new release.

Lucero – Smoke

Lucero – What Are You Willing to Lose?

Destroyer also has a new two song EP called Bay of Pigs, but don’t let the number of songs fool you: the combined tracks, “Bay of Pigs” and “Ravers,” add up to over 21 minutes. It’s a limited-edition, vinyl-only release, which has made it difficult for me to track down digitally, but I finally found ‘em, and here they are. Like most of Dan Bejar’s work with Destroyer, this is a mature, avant-garde work of art. The A-side, “Bay of Pigs,” is especially haunting. I recommend you spend the 21 minutes just appreciating these without other distractions. You can stare at the cover art because it’s gorgeous too. So good work, Dan Bejar. All three New Pornographers vocalists (Bejar, A.C. Newman, Neko Case) had awesome solo releases this year. Now it’s time to be a band again and make me another New Pornos record. Please.

Destroyer – Bay of Pigs

Destroyer – Ravers

That’s all for now from the music desk at Awkward World international headquarters here in Chicago. If you haven’t picked up the new comedy CD/DVD from Patton Oswalt, My Weakness is Strong, you should really get on that. I was underwhelmed by the Comedy Central special, but now that I’ve listened to or watched the unedited version about half a dozen times, it’s really grown on me. Oddly enough, some of the best bits are the ones Comedy Central cut out. Go figure.

I’ll leave you with some Patton to perk you up after that Destroyer mope-fest. Go support public health care. Till next time,

Tanner

Patton Oswalt – Rats

Patton Oswalt – The Magician