PLAYGROUND BOSTON

A three-way marriage.

That’s legal in Massachusetts, right?

Well, that’s exactly what you get out of The Indobox’s Adventure Rock:  a three-way marriage of electric, electronic, and acoustic as they switch at will from the passionately organic to the grindingly distorted and onward to the pleasantly & head-bobbing-ly danceable.

That also means there’s no way to single out any one instrumentalist or even vocalist.

Quinn Ferree’s natural drums give way periodically to drum-machine sounds that ramp up and down in the backdrop of tracks like “Reading,” and “Part II.”  Guitars provide stabbing rhythms and monolithic chords in the background while bright synth lines decorate a track. At other times, those same guitarists take the front seat, dial on the delay, and swim their way into your ears. The vocal styles and sounds also change throughout the record thanks to multiple singers, making for a further varied experience.

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Boston’s very own hardcore legends, Converge, are a band that I have always felt very strongly about, ever since I discovered them about 8 years ago. Nearly a decade, 4 stunning albums, and 2 Converge tattoos later, I feel I can safely say this is not going to be a picture perfect review, full of unbiased statistics and facts on Converge, and their newest release, Axe To Fall. Converge cannot be explained in facts and numbers, they are so much more than that, so much deeper, and dare I say it, more soulful than that.

First and foremost, I should say that Axe To Fall was born into a rather large and daunting shadow. Over the years Converge have released albums that can be described as nothing short of legendary, from the absolute masterpiece that is Jane Doe, to the classics, When Forever Comes Crashing and Petitioning An Empty Sky. These albums are held in such high regard by Converge fans that any new album is thoroughly scrutinized, torn apart, and ruthlessly compared to the classic fan favorites. To be perfectly honest, and badly as I wanted to be objective and judge the album on it’s own personal merits, I nearly did the same thing.

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Hallelujah the Hills‘ 2nd full length album Colonial Drones was released earlier this week on Misra Records. It is a dense and hazy, lo-fi affair, driven by spiraling melodies and thumping percussion. A whirlwind of cello, horns, drowsy keys, crunchy guitar and rumbling bass, the 13-track disc bites, soothes, becomes unhinged and crescendos masterfully throughout.

On “Blank Passports,” the band steers straight through a 4-minute build, while “Oxus Pagoda” dances in and out of its halcyon melody. The song “Variations On The Grand National Championships” rides out most pleasingly on the steady waves of Mathew Glover’s rolling drums. Meanwhile, Ryan Walsh’s lyrics read like a vaporous cloud of dreams, politics and love, somewhere between poetry and a stream-of-consciousness journal.

With noisy production and far-away sounding vocals garnished with harmonies and whistles, Colonial Drones drips of all things indie (minus the irony), thus fitting snugly in the present musical vogue- an album truly of the late 2000s. A mix of bitter and sweet with a hint of earthiness, I see it being the perfect soundtrack for the upcoming crisp fall evenings.

Hallelujah Hills is playing their Boston CD release show this Saturday, 9/26 at Great Scott. They are joined by rising stars You Can Be a Wesley and The Big Big Bucks. Don’t Miss it!

Hallelujah the Hills
You Can Be a Wesley
The Big Big Bucks

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The Beatings have become local heroes – not quite as explosive but, in the same proud vein of Boston success stories Pixies or Mighty Mighty Bosstones, meriting rave reviews from the elders at The New York Times to the more community-friendly music enthusiasts at The Phoenix. This quintet’s new, and much anticipated, album is true to their alt-rock sound but with a little less noise. Think: Interpol with …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of the Dead. It was hard for me to think I could like anything after the shrieking flair of “Heavy Metal” on their 2001 full-length album Italiano. But, The Beatings have proven me wrong, first with Holding on to Hand Grenades, and now with Late Season Kids – due to release September 15 on Midriff Records.

Late Season Kids is a mature album that skillfully incorporates the raw power of their earlier recordings with a dulcet sophistication. Tracks like “Ways and Means” echo with moony and lulling vocals like those of Mazzy Star, but this steely track also has a subtle, dissonant drumming that seemingly draws from the early influences of Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. “Scapegoats” offers an Ian McCulloch hazy croon that, despite The Beatings recent cross-over to domesticity in their personal lives (as their band blog so proudly states), would still appeal to fans of post-punk despondence. And, for those looking for a fix of the slow tempo waltz, low talking, and sweet melancholy of The Magnetic Fields, “Dreams of the Waking” is the cure (ha, okay, I didn’t even mean for that one to sneak in there).

See what all the fuss is about and do what you can to make it to Great Scott September 12 for The Beatings album release show.

The Beatings Website

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Since forming in the Summer of 2005, the Boston-based Britrock quintet The Luxury didn’t take long to make an impact on the local scene.  Now, following up their 2007 debut This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things with their newest, catchier and more mature release In The Wake Of What Won’t Change, they have once again dropped a bombshell on Boston.

The new album is seamlessly crafted from beginning to end, exploring every element a pop rock band would want to showcase – and then some! The album starts with a short intro track that flows into a whirl of crunchy/punchy guitar and bass, fluid synths, on-point drums… even horns and an opera singer. Furthermore, the complexity and diversity of the album is finalized and sincerely complimented by lead singer Jason Dunn’s soothing vocal harmonies.

The record touches on wide variety of musical ideas, from the brass-driven “Straightjacket” to the punchy guitar-led “Take It Back”.  Songs like these set this album apart from others in the genre by showcasing the bands experimental and progressive nature. It gives the listener a sense that ‘Yes, this is pop, this is rock, but it’s not just cotton candy and gumballs.’

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“Why am I, still in Massachusetts/ State that I love and I haaaate, -ate! –ate! –ate! –ate!” While listening to the chorus to Refuse Resist’s “Still In Massachusetts,” I imagined myself at one of their shows—a gritty concert hall or bar, most likely last song, last call—jabbing one clenched fist in the air while holding a pint with the other, shouting each lyric in unison with my inebriated brethren in the audience until I can’t shout any longer.

After listening to Refuse Resist’s debut slab of hardcore punk, simply put, I need to see this band live.

Mind: Yourself packs 13 songs of fast and heavy hardcore, and in true punk fashion, seven tracks clock in at just under two minutes. After all, if you need a six-minute epic to get your point across, you probably aren’t a punk band. And for the uninitiated, Refuse Resist play the type of hardcore that rose to prominence in the early 1980’s thanks to the Greg Ginns and Ian MacKayes of the world (see: Black Flag, Fugazi, Minor Threat) not the type that relies on chug-chug breakdowns and usually draws those annoying karate kid wannabes in the pit.

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I’ve heard quite a bit about Magic Magic– from their Phoenix accolade to their international praise from press giant The London Times, they’ve gained significant recognition with the release of their self-titled LP. They’ve got the theatrics, harmonies, and infusion of orchestral detail like pop-glam band of Montreal, and have been consistently compared to a band actually from Montreal, Arcade Fire. The Baroque pop edge of Magic Magic make them an easy comparison to these bands, and groups like The Decemberists, that make a dramatic production of each song. However, in the way Brian Wilson used the theremin to create a dark and haunting mise-en-scène to the sunny “Good Vibrations”, Magic Magic is able to produce generally cheerful melodies aided by the xylophone and seemingly upbeat vocals while still beautifully chanting lyrics with a gloomsday glow.

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I’ll be honest. When I first popped Higher Ground into my computer and fired it up in my iTunes, I thought it wasn’t really anything special, just alright. Turns out I was just way too focused on listening to the music and trying to pick different parts out of each of the EP’s five tracks to use as talking points in this review.

My bad.

Thing is, Cure for Static don’t play the type of highly-technical music that asks to be picked apart and studied like some kind of audio science experiment. All along I should’ve just taken the lead of Adam Kaufman (guitar/vox), Jarrett Clayman (guitar/vox), Brian Schon (drums) and Bill Batten (bass), and just sit back, relax, and let their wave of refreshing acoustic/electric rock wash over my nit-picking dumbass ways.

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Self-Released

2008

Think back to the time when alternative rock was a definable genre. Bill Clinton was president, you just watched Reality Bites for the 4th time, you may or may not have thought that ‘Smelly Cat’ was a hilarious moment when sitcom meets pop music, and also MTV played rock videos. These are the things I immediately think of when listening to The Dirty Truckers’ 2008 release Loose in the Joints.

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