indie

Album of the Week: Lambchop’s Mr. M (2012)

November 4, 2024 — Leave a comment

Driving to my 6AM grocery store shifts in the summer of 2015, Mr. M was an album I frequently listened to, needing something soothing and unhurried in my state of sleepy discomfort. My brother owned this CD (good choice, bro) so I took it with me in the car, sitting in there outside ShopRite drinking my coffee, smoking a cigarette on my breaks.

I never got over the perfection of opener “If Not I’ll Just Die” (the title cribbed from Bacharach’s “This Guy’s in Love With You”). Featuring “A London String Ensemble”, this song resonates with a calm beauty while exhibiting the wry humor that’s always been a part of Lambchop’s music. Lyrically, frontman Kurt Wagner seems to exist in and outside of the song: “crazy flutes” are mentioned, but never heard. Some lines seem to trail off (“maybe blowin’ kisses, blowin’ ?”), or are cryptic – “seagulls just avoid talk about seagulls,” or simple (“clean the coffeemaker”). I used to try to write these lyrics down from memory, and I’m still mesmerized by this song.

There is a heartbroken, bittersweet quality to much of this music. Singer and friend of the band Vic Chesnutt took his own life in late 2009, and Mr. M (recorded in the two years following) is dedicated to him. A line like “loss made us idiots” reflects the mental state of the band, again with dark humor. Really I never connected the impact of that event with the making of Mr. M until now, which is to say that the gloom of loss does not overpower the music. If anything there is a healing power in its soft delivery and smooth overtures.

Seasoned players create a slow atmosphere on many of these songs (see also: Is a Woman from 2002). But the meandering 10 minutes of “Gar” and “Nice Without Mercy” set “Buttons” in high relief. “I used to know your girlfriend / back when you used to have a girlfriend,” Wagner sings amid sad memories and observations. “Now she’s had another baby / and her life has gone suburban /And I wonder what she thinks of / when she thinks back now of you.” It’s hard not to read “Buttons” as a last letter to Chesnutt.

“It’s the kind of day you never wake up from,” begins “Kind Of”. This is Mr. M‘s big tearjerker, nestled between “Betty’s Overture” and the upbeat “The Good Life (is wasted)”. “Speak now love to me of your return,” sings Wagner in front of pleading strings. It’s the most tender moment on an album from a band that is usually as aloof as it is tender. In a discography loaded with great records, this is Lambchop’s masterpiece. Mr. M is a product of grief, but in its transfusion of pain it becomes a balm in itself, a work of magic.

Listen to Mr. M here.

Album of the Week: The Sea and Cake’s The Biz (1995)

September 25, 2023 — Leave a comment

Is Chicago underrated? Reading The Adventures of Augie March and listening to The Biz has me missing the Windy City, a feeling that was only amplified by a recent conversation I had with a gray-haired hipster dude at a Spellling show in Oakland. The guy was from Chicago and mentioned that Jeff Parker from Tortoise used to DJ some of the clubs he went to. Cue nostalgia for an era I never experienced!

Hipster mecca as it is (the home of Pitchfork!), Chicago in the early 90s found singer/guitarist Sam Prekop fronting the indie band Shrimp Boat. This great Pitchfork article notes that at the venue Lounge Ax in Lincoln Park, “Shrimp Boat played, according to [Doug] McCombs [of Tortoise], ‘this totally skronky, weird, idiosyncratic music with pop songs on top of it. They probably played like two shows a week and it felt like they were doing a completely new set of material each time they played.'”

When Shrimp Boat dissolved, Sam Prekop and SB bassist Eric Claridge formed The Sea and Cake with Tortoise’s John McEntire on drums and Archer Prewitt on guitar. Prekop hopped back into the local live circuit with the new band and they recorded and released three albums in the span of two years, The Biz being the third. Of the album, Prekop later said, “This one was recorded live, and I think we had worked out most of the tunes to play live, and that makes it different. We’d done shows with those songs before we’d put them on the record…and I think that’s the last time we worked that way… The way the songs arrived at that point was totally mysterious. Especially the song, ‘The Biz’… I still marvel at the bizarre chord progressions.”

Live and mysterious, yes, The Biz has that charming bookish 90s indie band style going for it from the jump. I’m surprised at how long it took for me to listen to The Sea and Cake given that I like them more than some of their contemporaries, other bands that are too dense/noisy or have bad vocals. Since you could apply the adjectives “chill” and “jammy” to a bunch of this, it makes perfect sense that I enjoy it. But I do think TSaC have an appeal broader than their popularity reflects, especially today when all their albums are available at the touch of a button. You could put on “Station in the Valley” at a laidback outdoor function and no one would bat an eye. And “The Transaction” resounds with the kind of sunny chords that populate some of the bigger Alex G songs.

That live recording/feeling Prekop mentioned translates here and the band sounds really tight. They’re also using EML-101 and ARP 2600 synths for an added dimension of sound. The band’s been labeled post-rock, but what they’re doing here doesn’t feel overly complicated or even dramatic. It’s not like it’s one-note either: “Darkest Night” is quite relaxing and “Escort”, two tracks later, is angular and noisy. File The Biz in with your overlooked indie rock records, and jam out.

Listen to The Biz here.

Album of the Week: Pure X’s Angel (2014)

September 11, 2023 — Leave a comment

Did you forget me?

I had (a thankfully pretty minor case of) covid this week, so there wasn’t much to do but sit around and get stoned, which led me to revisiting some of Gorilla Vs. Bear’s old AOTY lists. The GvB peeps specialize in indie stoner music, and I found a familiar name I hadn’t thought about in a while – Pure X! The dudes from Austin have 4 full-length albums, with 2014’s Angel – their first and only LP on Fat Possum – being my favorite.

This week we say RIP Gary Wright, whose iconic 70s soft-pop smash “Dream Weaver” is echoed here in “Fly Away with Me Woman” – silky smooth! It’s no secret by now that I like chill music. And holy shit! Angel makes Phish sound like Iron Maiden. From the jump the vibe is gentle and relaxing, “Starlight” is just a real mellow jam. “Livin’ the Dream” dips a bit deeper into psych-rock, but it’s still exceptionally chill. (Stuck in my room with covid… now that’s what I call livin’ the dream!) “Rain”, with its slo-mo fuzz buildup, also produces a bit of a different vibe.

A huge highlight comes during the synth and strings in the back half of “Every Tomorrow”, one of the best and sweetest songs here. There’s also a nice turn of phrase in “White Roses” – “Turn the music up / Let the flowers bloom”. Kinda sounds like a Grateful Dead lyric! Hell yeah. They should consider playing this album at my dentist’s office. It would be way more relaxing than the John Fogerty covers or whatever the hell’s going on there.

Listen to Angel here.