Originally published in Soundcheck Magazine (10/28/08)
Good lord! Has Panda Bear been bitten by Chupacabra? No need to call the World Wildlife Fund, it’s just Pablo Díaz-Reixa – better known as El Guincho. It’s easy to make that mistake, though – sort of. They both specialize in Animal Collective’s perfected style of what I like to call carousel rock – it goes around in circles, speeding around and around in maddening repetition until your pupils dilate and your head explodes (because, you know, all carousels do that).
The big difference is who’s riding the lead horse. For Panda Bear, there’s a clear and obvious Brian Wilson influence. For El Guincho’s debut, Alegranza!, it could be any number of Latin jazz and salsa heroes (Tito Puente? Mongo Santamaria? Gato Barbieri?). With Panda Bear, the blue-sky-and-surf style makes the music a slow, momentous, cheerful churn. But with the maraca-shaking fizz of El Guincho’s Spanish drive, the music comes off like a conga line of zombies from Night of the Living Dead. As you may or may not imagine, that makes it pretty awesome.
As a whole, Alegranza! is scarily hypnotizing. By the end of the five-and-a-half-minute “Antillas”, you may wonder why you listened to seemingly the same, looping riff over and over for that long. But you know you’ll do it again the moment the song comes on again. The reason is in the album’s subtleties – particularly the syncopated rhythms that keep a beat fresh even if you don’t consciously know it.
The album deserves further points for the song “Buenos Matrimonios Ahí Fuera”, which sounds like it finds the first successfully commercial use for a Chilean Rainmaker. (You know, they are those long, hollowed-out branches you see in the mall that make rain noises when you flip them upside-down – yes, the ones you always asked your parents for but that they never bought you.) There’s a whole smorgasbord of timbres to taste here, not the least of which are the whoops and yelps of whomever Díaz-Reixa had in the studio at the time.
El Guincho has created a world within an album. It has a pulse – and a fast one, at that. Listening to Alegranza! is like visiting a town market in Spain. You can swear you smell the paella cooking, the merchants laughing, the children playing. I’ve never been to a town market in Spain, and maybe they are nothing like this. But Alegranza! makes me hope that they are as fun as this album is.
– Andy Pareti
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Review - Dungen: 4
Originally published in Soundcheck Magazine (10/28/08)
I have a friend who uses a porcelain sculpture of a woman carrying a basket to hold his roach clips and who lights up Led Zeppelin-brand incense in his room. Needless to say, this friend would love Dungen’s new album, 4. But what about the rest of us?
The question is relevant because, up until this point, Dungen’s albums were dynamic enough to garner interest from many different standpoints despite the ease of labeling their sound as simply “vintage rock.” It always was a term of affection, though. Unlike other bands, who simply want to be their heroes, Dungen embodies all that is good about 1960s and 1970s psychedelic rock. In short, Dungen mastermind Gustav Ejstes is, above all, an unfortunate victim of time.
It doesn’t even seem logical that, in an age where a DJ simply can change the hairdo of an old classic and write it off as new and see success, something with the breadth and detail of Dungen’s psycho-jazz symphonies still has appeal. So far, they do. But this latest Dungen release is a bit different.
Consider the “Intro” track on 2007’s Tio Bitar: it is a terrific microburst of psychedelic madness and searing electric soloing, but it isn’t really a song as much as a brief detour. Not like the epic “Mon Amour”, a specimen that lived, breathed and died in a near-nine minute span. On 4, there are lots of “Intros” and not enough “Mon Amours”. Both the good and bad ideas on this album are never really fleshed out into substantial material. More often than not, they fade out prematurely, as though Ejstes couldn’t really think of where to take them next.
Instead of expanding his already-huge musical imagination, Ejstes fills out his album with spots of wholly irrelevant smooth jazz. And on the grand wavelength of bad-to-good jazz music, Dungen’s departures are maddeningly closer to Kenny G wankery than John Coltrane grace. Where are the beautiful Middle Eastern vistas such as “C Visar Vägen” or the unpredictable ventures of 2004’s Ta Det Lugnt’s title track?
They are there somewhere, hidden in the much-better second half of the album – buried in the piano-trot of “Fredag” and acoustic-electric harmony of “Mina Damer Och Fasaner”. But after two fantastic albums, expectations are far too high to let this spotty release go without a slight sigh of disappointment.
– Andy Pareti
I have a friend who uses a porcelain sculpture of a woman carrying a basket to hold his roach clips and who lights up Led Zeppelin-brand incense in his room. Needless to say, this friend would love Dungen’s new album, 4. But what about the rest of us?
The question is relevant because, up until this point, Dungen’s albums were dynamic enough to garner interest from many different standpoints despite the ease of labeling their sound as simply “vintage rock.” It always was a term of affection, though. Unlike other bands, who simply want to be their heroes, Dungen embodies all that is good about 1960s and 1970s psychedelic rock. In short, Dungen mastermind Gustav Ejstes is, above all, an unfortunate victim of time.
It doesn’t even seem logical that, in an age where a DJ simply can change the hairdo of an old classic and write it off as new and see success, something with the breadth and detail of Dungen’s psycho-jazz symphonies still has appeal. So far, they do. But this latest Dungen release is a bit different.
Consider the “Intro” track on 2007’s Tio Bitar: it is a terrific microburst of psychedelic madness and searing electric soloing, but it isn’t really a song as much as a brief detour. Not like the epic “Mon Amour”, a specimen that lived, breathed and died in a near-nine minute span. On 4, there are lots of “Intros” and not enough “Mon Amours”. Both the good and bad ideas on this album are never really fleshed out into substantial material. More often than not, they fade out prematurely, as though Ejstes couldn’t really think of where to take them next.
Instead of expanding his already-huge musical imagination, Ejstes fills out his album with spots of wholly irrelevant smooth jazz. And on the grand wavelength of bad-to-good jazz music, Dungen’s departures are maddeningly closer to Kenny G wankery than John Coltrane grace. Where are the beautiful Middle Eastern vistas such as “C Visar Vägen” or the unpredictable ventures of 2004’s Ta Det Lugnt’s title track?
They are there somewhere, hidden in the much-better second half of the album – buried in the piano-trot of “Fredag” and acoustic-electric harmony of “Mina Damer Och Fasaner”. But after two fantastic albums, expectations are far too high to let this spotty release go without a slight sigh of disappointment.
– Andy Pareti
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Soundbyte- Talkdemonic: Eyes at Half Mast
Originally published in Soundcheck Magazine (10/10/08)
Talkdemonic
Eyes at Half Mast
Arena Rock
Available Now
Behind Talkdemonic’s hardened lab coat shell - the same kind of cold experimentation that works for bands like Explosions in the Sky - is a great white, fiery ball of potential. On their latest album, Eyes at Half Mast, the band continues to affirm that potential without exactly reaching it. It’s like founder Kevin O’Conner and his musical assistant Lisa Molinaro can see the horizon and make out the shapes of the land ahead, but can’t quite seem to sail the ship to shore. Surrounding the banjo heartbeat with moaning violas, buzzing synths and shocking dashes of dissonance seems to be the scientific equation here, and it’s certainly an interesting listen. But this album suffers the same fate as Dungen’s new album, 4 - there are plenty of ideas, but none that are given any legs to stand on. Perhaps O’Conner is being too modest, and should indulge his inner-progger. The irresistible build of “Black Wood Crimson” sets up Talkdemonic for a symphony that never comes. I never thought I’d say this, but I want more pretension.
-Andy Pareti
Talkdemonic
Eyes at Half Mast
Arena Rock
Available Now
Behind Talkdemonic’s hardened lab coat shell - the same kind of cold experimentation that works for bands like Explosions in the Sky - is a great white, fiery ball of potential. On their latest album, Eyes at Half Mast, the band continues to affirm that potential without exactly reaching it. It’s like founder Kevin O’Conner and his musical assistant Lisa Molinaro can see the horizon and make out the shapes of the land ahead, but can’t quite seem to sail the ship to shore. Surrounding the banjo heartbeat with moaning violas, buzzing synths and shocking dashes of dissonance seems to be the scientific equation here, and it’s certainly an interesting listen. But this album suffers the same fate as Dungen’s new album, 4 - there are plenty of ideas, but none that are given any legs to stand on. Perhaps O’Conner is being too modest, and should indulge his inner-progger. The irresistible build of “Black Wood Crimson” sets up Talkdemonic for a symphony that never comes. I never thought I’d say this, but I want more pretension.
-Andy Pareti
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
