The latest music from Animal Collective’s Avey Tare is probably the most straight forward music he has put out to date, though terms like “straight forward” have always been relative when applied to the music he makes. It’s still eons from anything considered “common” these days.
Dave Portner is now living in California and is about to put out Enter the Slasher House with former Dirty Projectors member Angel Deradoorian and ex-Ponytail drummer Jeremy Hyman, under the name Slasher Flicks. The music for the group’s album, due in April, was recorded live using little overdubs. There’s Scooby-Doo/Saturday evening cartoon vibes all over “Little Fang,” a song that fellow Paw Tracks artists Dent May or Ariel Pink could have easily recorded, but thrown off just enough with Portner singing like he’s experiencing a full on sugar high at a carnival or a disco. A song like this could also easily fit in with Lindsey Buckingham’s cast-off 1984 solo album Go Insane.
It’s interesting to hear Portner sing over rhythms that are not his own or fellow band mate’s Panda Bear. Hyman’s got a pretty straight forward kick going and instead of swaths of reverb and layers upon layers of sound, you can tell apart and count on one hand the number of tracks on this song.
If his 2010 solo album Down There was about hiding in the fog and being stuck in a rut, then this song is about going out, having a good time and taking off the masks, or putting them on. Cheers.
-----
Conor Oberst, barely in his mid-30s, has led many musical lives. We’ve had almost 20 years worth of material from the Nebraskan wonderkid who used to frenetically strum his guitar and sing his lines in the form of a panic attack. With Bright Eyes having possibly put out it’s last album in 2011 (Oberst says he can’t listen to material from that era anymore), we’re being treated to a solo album, recorded in Nashville with Jonathan Wilson, who did stuff for Dawes.
“Hundreds of Ways” sounds more like Paul Simon hunkering down to make some country music, though dominated by the wordplay of Conor Oberst. There’s the knobby basslines and horns as Oberst sings, “there are hundreds of ways to get through the day.” It’s an uplifting song, one that might turn off anyone who is used to the red-wine-and-cigarette-smoke depression of his early 00s material, but for Oberst it’s new territory.
The musicianship is top notch (Dawes will be backing him for a tour starting in the spring). I really liked People’s Key and even his Mystic Valley Band stuff, which this resembles. Here’s hoping this isn’t Oberst starting to drift off into Dylan’s New Morning phase.
0 comments
Post a Comment