Showing posts with label wondrous bughouse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wondrous bughouse. Show all posts
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Top Ten March Album Releases

We've got some impressive releases leading us into the mists this March. Break out the St. Patrick's Day attire and watch the snow melt away while you spin some of these great new records.
10. Suuns - Images Du Futur
Montreal quartet Suuns (who were just featured in our first installment of the Festival Bands, Man! series) came together in 2006 when frontman Ben Shemie got together with bassisst Joe Yarmush, to record some beats, which eventually worked their way into songs. Grabbing two new members Liam O’Neill and Max Henry, the group expanded and released their debut record Zeroes QC in 2010. On March 5, Suuns will unveil their anticipated sophomore record Images Du Fur via Secretly Canadian. The first single off the new record “Edie’s Dream” further exhibits the group’s ability at carefully-crafted psychedelic tunes. Listen to “Edie’s Dream” below:


9. Julian Lynch - Lines
Madison, WI PhD candidate and musician Julian Lynch will release his follow-up to last year’s Terra with the LP Lines, due out March 26 via Underwater Peoples. The first single off the record “Carios kelleyi I” follows in Lynch's signature strand of textured, chromatic folk, with cheerful acoustic riffs coated with Lynch's warm hum. Listen to “Carios kelleyi I” below:


8. Chvrches - Recover EP
The title track off Chvrches' new EP wastes no time as lead singer Lauren Mayberry's vocals deliver a shot of adrenaline with a instantly catchy verse leading into an even more enthralling chorus. The Scottish trio will release the EP via Goodbye Records on March 25. Listen to "Recover" below:


 7. Marnie Stern - The Chronicles of Marnia
Marnie Stern has been in the news quite a bit in the past few months. First, the New York indie-rocker has aparently started a real contest to win a date with her, and more importantly has shared a few tracks from her forthcoming record The Chronicles of Marnia which is due out March 19. The latest single "Nothing Is Easy" doesn't dissapoint with Stern's catchy whine, and convoluted guitar licks and percussion. Listen to the track here.

6. David Bowie - The Next Day
For the past decade or so, David Bowie has been pretty silent. One minute you're reading a story about how he will never put out another album ever again, then suddenly The Next Day is announced. As confusing as that last sentence is, and as bad as some of Bowie's '00-era records are, it's always exciting when a pop legend decides to come out of an apparent retirement and deliver a new collection of songs. Especially when the legend in question is 66 years old. The Next Day is officially out on March 12 in the US, but it is currently streaming on iTunes. Watch the video for "Where Are We Now?" below:

5. Phosphorescent - Muchacho
Phosphorescent, aka Matt Houck, will release his sixth studio record Muchacho, on March 19 via Dead Oceans. The first cut off the record is called "Song for Zula," a languid, floaty track with spiraling strings complete with an echoed drum loop. The New York via Alabama musician traveled to Mexico early last year after a brief "freak out" in order to find inspiration.  When he came back to New York with a clear head, songs for Muchacho poured out. Listen to "Song for Zula" below:


4. Waxahatchee - Cerulean Salt
Waxahatchee is Birmingham native Katie Crutchfield. Still riding off the energy of her debut full-length American Weekend, Crutchfield will release her follow-up Cerulean Salt tomorrow via Don Giovanni Records. Crutchfield thrives on her unique lo-fi stylings, thought-provoking lyricism, and heart-on-sleeve approach to songwriting that goes unrivaled in today's immense DIY folk scene. Listen to the single “Peace and Quiet” off the record below and stream Cerulean Salt in its entirety over at NPR. 

3. Rhye - Woman
Rhye’s first single “The Fall,” which came out late last year, was a crisp, androgynous track released by an anonymous group that had the attention of the indie blogosphere pretty fast. The sexy, yet minimal, track was intriguing everyone, and finally Toronto-born Mike Milosh came forward as the lead singer behind the duo. As they release their debut record Woman today, Rhye is entering an exciting time; they're only going to get more popular. Watch the entrancing video for “The Fall” below:

2. The Men - New Moon
The Men have decided to stay the prolific course and will release their fourth record in three years with New Moon on March 5. The record is streaming over at Pitchfork right now and upon first listen it immediately sounds a lot more varied and expansive, still exuding a punk influence, but with country and pop underpinnings. The group has maintained all the songwriting perks of last year’s Open Your Heart, with an array of new instrumentals including mandolin, harmonica, piano, and lap guitar. The record is being released by Sacred Bones. Listen to the single “Electric” below:


1. Youth Lagoon - Wondrous Bughouse
Youth Lagoon aka Trevor Powers’ record The Year of Hibernation was arguably the best debut of 2011, as it scaled a mountainous terrain of lo-fi dream-pop, and perfected the art of the build with tracks like “Montana” and “July” starting with calm synth textures and peaking with Powers’ ethereal croon. While the The Year of Hibernation was recorded in a friend’s garage in a few days, his sophomore album was done in a proper studio with the help of producer Ben H. Allen (Animal Collective, Deerhunter). And while there is a definite improvment in production and style, Powers is still blowing our minds, this time via a diversity of layered instrumentals and reeling psychadelic imagery. Each track takes on it’s own varied form, with emphasis on tempo changes and whimsical lyrical imagery. The album is out tomorrow via Fat Possum, but you can stream the album now over at NPR. Also, be sure to check out our detailed Songbook Report on the album here.

Tom Dennis
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Songbook Report: Youth Lagoon's Wondrous Bughouse


Youth Lagoon’s new album is called Wondrous Bughouse. The word “bughouse” is a slightly archaic term that was sometimes used to describe an insane asylum. By extension, it was also sometimes used as an adjective. I.e.: That man in the street ripping Eggo waffles in half in his pajamas is “bughouse.” (In more modern parlance, people sometimes do still “bug out.”) But a “wondrous” bughouse might be something slightly different.

Taken more literally, a “bughouse” if you try to imagine it, might look like a child’s terrarium with lots of little organisms in it and some leaves and grass and maybe a stick. It might not seem very “wondrous” to us, as adult, human, outside observers. But to its inhabitants, such a world would be positively awe-inspiring and/or impossible to comprehend. To the bugs in a terrarium that plastic box is their universe and they’ll never know any different. The humans looking in on them might not be very amazed, but the unimaginable beings looking in on our awe-inspiring, impossible-to-comprehend human-world might not be very amazed by us either. It doesn’t make it any less wondrous to us though.

Maybe these metaphysical contemplations are what send some terrestrial bughouse residents to institutional bughouses in the first place. Hopefully, though, it causes us (as it seemingly has for Youth Lagoon's Trevor Powers) to do something more productive, like make an album about the enigmatic, unfathomable nature of our world and the life that inhabits it.

Wondrous Bughouse starts with “Through Mind and Back,” an instrumental track that gives some indication of the territory about to be traversed. The song sounds like an idea that, after entering the human brain, floats around for a bit, before being directed “back”: either out of the mind or, perhaps, down one’s “back,” evoking imagery of chills down a spine.

From there, Powers launches into the first proper song on the album, “Mute,” with a much fuller sound than anything on his debut album including, most notably, the use of an actual drum-kit. He begins the album with a vague line about “living in a 3D world,” further supporting that the mission here will be to evaluate the same. As the song builds and adds instruments and effects and complications, Powers makes reference to “roses” and “corpses” before repeating: “I’ve never seen them.” He then makes references to “stories” he’s been told before repeating: “I never listened.”

The idea seems to be that we often go through life without really “looking” or “listening” to the things in it, probably because we are usually so busy “talking.” The title of the song, “Mute,” might refer then to the benefits of exercising one’s other senses at the cost of speech. In the classic Twilight Zone episode, also called “Mute,” a little girl named Ilse is raised without being taught how to verbally communicate. This causes Ilse’s other senses to become enhanced, including a latent telepathic ability that had supposedly become repressed in humans because of their development of, and over-dependence on, speech. “Mute” suggests that perhaps humans have been robbing themselves of greater understanding of their world by talking so much and failing to pay attention.

This sentiment sets the tone for the examination of the physical and spiritual that occurs throughout the rest of the album. On “The Bath,” Powers sings “to watch is not to see” and on “Third Dystopia” he speaks of “pretending to see over the cliff,” seemingly trying to pinpoint an ethereal quality that can’t quite be identified. On “Raspberry Cane” “everybody cares” and “everybody’s wanting to see,” where, in all of these songs, “seeing” appears to be shorthand for “understanding” some larger truth about the wondrous bughouse we’re all living in.

On slightly heavier numbers like “Pelican Man,” Powers sings “it’s not true, it’s all in your head” and references “demons” in your bed, which appears to foreshadow an idea that he visits in more depth on “Sleep Paralysis.” Sleep Paralysis, in case you are blissfully unaware, is a sleep phenomenon that causes people to, literally, become momentarily paralyzed while they hallucinate that someone or something is in the room with them trying to do them harm. (Having experienced it on a few occasions  I can assure you, it’s as fucking terrifying as it sounds.)

Appropriately, the song “Sleep Paralysis” starts with what sounds like a peaceful, 50’s lullaby where Powers sings “through the house, walking fast, stranger tell me, I don’t really see what I am seeing now” before the narrator evidently falls asleep and the music changes to something approximating the pop-menace of “Heroes and Villains.” Powers takes the trip into the hallucinatory realm of half-dream/half-reality, singing, “shepherd, I’ve been lost too many times to be free,” before seemingly waking up once again to the sound of the peaceful lullaby. All of this seems to be some recognition of the power of the mind and perception and how impossible it must be to make sense of the world around us when our brains are sometimes barely even capable of making sense of our own bedrooms.

The album’s centerpiece and lead single, “Dropla,” is one of the only songs on the album that takes a break from being overwhelmed by the enormity of life and seemingly attempts to fight back against it. Throughout the song (which is the most direct tribute on the album to the clean, watery, metallic notes of his prior album) Powers repeats the phrase “you’ll never die” over and over again with the stubborn insistence of someone in denial. Of course, the phrase, taken literally, can’t be true. At around 2:45 in the song though, (intensity increasing) Powers sings what sounds like: “you weren’t there, when I needed, you were lost, you pulled me under” before immediately going back to repeating: “you’ll never die,” again and again and again.

After the bridge, it almost seems as if Powers is speaking to someone who is actually already dead, re-casting his statement of “you’ll never die” as not just adamant denial but a fervent self-determination that there’s something bigger than “life,” making us all immortal, that he just can’t see yet.

The influence of producer, Ben H. Allen, (responsible for recent Animal Collective and Deerhunter albums) is most apparent on the two “waltz” numbers on the album, “Attic Doctor” and “Daisyphobia.” The haunted-forest carnival-music of “Attic Doctor” seems as if it could be a Centipede Hz B-side and it sets the tone early for the esoteric mystery that pervades the rest of the album. It’s on the closing track, “Daisyphobia,” however, where Powers most effectively uses 3/4-time to represent the themes of Wondrous Bughouse.

The interesting thing about music in 3/4-time is that because it has become nearly inseparable from the waltz, one can practically “see” music in that time signature “spinning” in circles. It conjures images of ballerinas in music boxes, records on turntables, resolving melodies, infinitely looping sounds. “Daisyphobia” “spins” in this way, over and over, like children getting dizzy, like the cyclical nature of life, like our world, the bughouse, rotating and revolving and then fading away into nothingness.

So why would anyone have a “fear of daisies?” Well if you use daisy petals as a means of prognostication (“he loves me, he doesn’t,” etc.) you could be afraid of facing the finality of your fate once you’ve pulled the last petal. Bringing that to the macro-level (and the seminal political attack ad level), you could also be afraid that after all of our spinning and questioning and wonderment, we might just be destined to become the authors of our bughouse’s own demise.



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