May 12, 2013 — The band embraces the century-old traditions of Mexican music its members encountered while growing up in south Texas. But it also freshens classic sounds with an ear toward punk energy and reckless, intense power.
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album cover ( )
First Listen: Piñata Protest, 'El Valiente'
May 12, 2013 — The band embraces the century-old traditions of Mexican music its members encountered while growing up in south Texas. But it also freshens classic sounds with an ear toward punk energy and reckless, intense power.
I was in high school, playing drums in a band with some pals in the mid-'70s, when I got a call from my uncle: Would I like to play a couple of dates with his norteño band over the summer?
While my drumming skills were decidedly high-school-level in terms of the rock and pop music of that era, I thought to myself that I was good enough for the two-step waltzes and cumbias that are a staple of accordion-fueled dance parties all over the Southwest and northern Mexico.
During that summer of 1976, in some nameless cantina somewhere in northern California, I discovered that rock 'n' roll and norteño actually had a lot in common: Both project raw, reckless, intense power that celebrates life, and both are meant to move butts onto the dance floor.
Which, in turn, explains why the new album from the young San Antonio band Piñata Protest sounds so natural. Its members project that same energy throughout throughout El Valiente, but with more of a punk aesthetic; the whole thing begins and ends in the span of less than 20 minutes. But, while punk was built on the idea of ignoring (if not destroying) all that came before it, Piñata Protest embraces the century-old traditions of Mexican music its members encountered while growing up in south Texas.
El Valiente (out May 21) includes a great morning-after song that celebrates living life today while anticipating regret tomorrow, as well as a track that examines the realities of living along the U.S./Mexico border. But one of the biggest joys of the album and this band is how they transform everyone's favorite ranchera song — "Volver, Volver" — into an over-the-top punk rave-up that makes me want to stage-dive into a pit of cowboy hats and big belt buckles.
Of course, ranchera fans know their way around cowboy hats and big belt buckles, and the guys in Piñata Protest rock their tattoos and cowboy hats as seamlessly as their music spans cultures and genres. That's the ultimate lesson of El Valiente: that the combination of accordions and punk represents an organic expression of the bicultural life lived by millions across this country.
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The Handsome Family's new album, Wilderness, comes out May 14. (Courtesy of the artist)
First Listen: The Handsome Family, 'Wilderness'
May 12, 2013 — The duo returns with a concept album about wildlife, with an emphasis on nature's capacity for destruction. Animals may burrow in and out of each of these songs, but they're merely helping humanity forge a pathway to madness.For nine studio albums spanning more than two decades, The Handsome Family's Brett and Rennie Sparks have crafted a sort of glum Appalachian fatalism. With Brett singing his wife's evocative lyrics, the Albuquerque-based duo examines the underbelly of the human psyche — demons, depression, death — with a sound that spans many generations at once.
On Wilderness, out May 14, The Handsome Family returns with a concept album about wildlife — each song is named for some creature or other — with an emphasis on nature's capacity for destruction. In "Caterpillars," a woman is struck by lightning and struggles to escape the unkind vibrations that haunt her. "Woodpecker" tells the story of the "Wisconsin Window Smasher," Mary Sweeney, from the 1890s — then follows its tragic protagonist to the insane asylum. "The owls, they mock me / and have stolen my pills," Brett Sparks sings at one point in "Owls." Animals may burrow in and out of each of these songs, but they're merely helping humanity forge a pathway to madness.
Wilderness' deluxe edition includes a companion book full of Rennie Sparks' evocative artwork — her ants, eels and octopi occupy the CD art, too. But, beautiful as they are, her visual work is virtually redundant: The Handsome Family's greatest gift of all lies in its tremendous talent for painting vivid, sometimes terrifying pictures with every word.
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First Listen: G&D, 'The Lighthouse'
May 12, 2013 — On The Lighthouse, Georgia Anne Muldrow and Dudley Perkins engineer an overstuffed, idea-packed collision of funk, soul, hip-hop, jazz, psychedelic space-rock, spoken-word poetry, protest music and more. Along the way, they examine innumerable intersections of love, politics, spirituality, healthy living, parenthood and world citizenship.
Georgia Anne Muldrow and Dudley Perkins (a.k.a. Declaime) have worked together and separately for years now, trafficking in funk, soul, hip-hop, jazz, psychedelic space-rock, spoken-word poetry, protest music and more. But they've rarely combined all of the above as ambitiously as they do throughout their two albums as G&D; on the self-released The Lighthouse, the married couple engineers an overstuffed collision of concepts and genres while exploring the innumerable intersections of love, politics, spirituality, healthy living, parenthood and world citizenship.
The Lighthouse's 17 tracks are full of compelling fragments — interludes, asides, samples, songs that stop and start unexpectedly — all of which add up to a sort of funky, playful, Afrocentric idea salad. That's no surprise, given the innovative Las Vegas musicians' past affiliations; Declaime has worked with Madlib, Tha Alkaholiks, Flying Lotus, The Lootpack and more, while Muldrow's collaborators include Mos Def, Erykah Badu and Robert Glasper.
Muldrow and Perkins have spent their entire recording careers marinating in eccentric creativity — their own as well as others' — so it's no surprise that their work together has a full-to-bursting quality: As performers and producers, they shape-shift and reinvent with a relentlessness that's hard to contain on a single record. Thankfully, The Lighthouse (out May 21) does its best, while still taking care to careen in countless directions at any moment.
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Classixx's new album, Hanging Gardens, comes out May 14. (Courtesy of the artist)
First Listen: Classixx, 'Hanging Gardens'
by Otis Hart
May 5, 2013 — All at once, Hanging Gardens feels vibrant and vintage, unmistakably young and inexplicably nostalgic. Classixx's Michael David and Tyler Blake may be known as DJs, but they're pop stars at heart, with melody reigning over rhythm and simple chord progressions carrying the day.Audio for this feature is no longer available.
The California duo Classixx treats dance music in much the same way Instagram treats photos: The band's full-length debut, Hanging Gardens (out May 14), feels vibrant and vintage, unmistakably young and unnaturally nostalgic, all at the same time.
It's a trick Michael David and Tyler Blake, both bred in the L.A. suburbs, have been mastering for a while now. The childhood friends started making music together more than 10 years ago, but were known more for golden hour remixes of other artists (Phoenix, Mayer Hawthorne) than for their own songwriting. That should change with Hanging Gardens, on which David and Blake filter French house through a smooth Yacht Rock lens. The vibe is so SoCal, it's hard to imagine listening to these songs in the dark.
Make no mistake: These are definitely songs. David and Blake may be known as DJs, but they're pop stars at heart, with melody reigning over rhythm and simple chord progressions carrying the day. In fact, all that really differentiates these synth-heavy anthems from their '80s soft-rock predecessors is the presence of euphoric swells and drops.
And, oh, those swells. There are probably five or six moments on Hanging Gardens that will douse your brain in serotonin whether you want them to or not. The wave can be felt building from miles away, but that doesn't make it any less overwhelming when it hits.
So here's to Classixx and the first summer album of 2013. May your next four months be as carefree and captivating as Hanging Gardens.
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Eluvium's new album, Nightmare Ending, comes out May 14. (Courtesy of the artist)
First Listen: Eluvium, 'Nightmare Ending'
by Robin Hilton
May 5, 2013 — Often amorphous and mostly instrumental, Matthew Cooper's songs suggest a sea of emotions: joy, sorrow, fear, love, awe. Nightmare Ending is a double album of hymns celebrating the majesty and wonder of life.Audio for this feature is no longer available.
Matthew Cooper, who writes and records as Eluvium, has spent the past decade producing a vast and remarkable catalog of ambient and electronic music. Often amorphous and mostly instrumental, his songs suggest a sea of emotions: joy, sorrow, fear, love, awe. Cooper's seventh album as Eluvium, Nightmare Ending (out May 14), is his best yet, and it's full of some of 2013's most transporting new music.
Conceived and written over a period of several years, Nightmare Ending is a double album of hymns celebrating the majesty and wonder of life. Much like the films of Terrence Malick, who relies more on scenery than traditional dialogue to tell stories, Eluvium's songs are built around dreamlike narratives that lie somewhere within the beautiful, moving sonic imagery.
As with much of Cooper's music, the most melodic songs on Nightmare Ending use circular themes — trance-inducing lines repeated over and over — but nothing here feels monotonous. The shifts are gradual, almost imperceptible, and unfold like a slowly blooming flower. The album's most conventional moments appear in two lovely solo piano songs ("Impromptu" and "Entendre"), while tracks such as "Rain Gently," "By the Rails" and "Strange Arrivals" become massively distorted ambient pieces that recall the work of experimental noise artist Tim Hecker.
Nightmare Ending's sole vocal track, "Happiness," closes the second disc and features Yo La Tengo frontman Ira Kaplan. It feels slightly out of place among the rest of the songs, if only because it's so unexpected. But Kaplan, who also wrote the words, nestles his voice perfectly in the mix. "I'll shut the blinds at night," he sings. "Pull the blankets tight, dreaming / Please let me dare." It's Kaplan's own nebulous interpretation of Eluvium's music, of course. But it suggests that the road to happiness exists somewhere outside the material world, in an imagined nirvana. It's an appropriate ending for an album whose detachment from reality is gloriously rendered.
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