Merch: November 20, 2008
Portugal the Man Censored Colors (Equal Vision)
A third PtM album in three years could be seen as frantic cashing-in, given the glacier-like pace indie rockers customarily set for album releases, but Censored Colors is no sign of slackening quality or lowered standards. This is not an album as much as two conjoined EPs, with the first, The Colors, being a slick, mini pop-opera cut from the same gorgeous bolt as last year’s Church Mouth. The shimmering “Lay Me Back Down” is an obvious bid for alt-FM attention and “Salt” about as close to Philly soul as any band from Wasilla, Alaska (home of the dread Sarah Palin), is ever going to get. Pretty, very. There’s two minutes of scrap tunage titled “Intermission,” then on to The Twenty-Five, the noise-pop back half of the show. Filled with Mancini-esque horn breaks and weird McCartneyite hooks left dangling in midair as snares for the unwary, the six tracks dissolve into each other in time-crusted avant-noize style, but the band’s sense of tunecraft and audience razzle-dazzle never fail them. Get it. −Ron Garmon
Grafton Primary Eon (Independent/MGM)
Cornering the market on angular, Aussie synth-pop, Grafton Primary releases Eon, its first LP and much-anticipated follow-up to last year’s Relativity EP. Eon’s production values are stellar; bright electro-beat bombshells explode around tense melodies with a dramatic vocal delivery reminiscent of Thomas Dolby. With lyrics that are simultaneously cerebral and emo-bleeding-out broad, brothers Josh and Ben Garden come across as self-appointed poet laureates of the hyperreal generation. “We are Music” straddles the abyss of ’80s irony, while “Records for the Righteous” reads like a manifesto of dance music politics: “Records for the righteous, needles on the track, sound is independence, play the power back.” Clean, crisp, angular-yet-infectious, Grafton Primary has its shite together, and will no doubt appeal to all those who like a certain amount of dark reality in their synth-driven drama-pop. But be warned, these boys have a keytar, and they are not afraid to use it. –Ramie Becker
Nebula Heavy Psych (Salt of the Earth)
L.A. rock trio Nebula manages the cool trick of sounding both wild-eyed and heavy-lidded on the group’s latest EP, Heavy Psych. Reduced to one remaining original member, singer-guitarist Eddie Glass, Nebula’s core mission remains unchanged: To churn out blues-infused space jams that sound like the members simply couldn’t hang with anybody since 1975. The latest disc doesn’t rewrite the rules – and isn’t a classic like Nebula’s 2001 full-length Charged – it merely sounds as if the band’s become even more enamored of recent tourmates Monster Magnet than previously revealed. Highlights include the funky romp “The Dagger,” the thunderous primitivism of “Dream Submarine,” and the horny adolescent wail of “Aphrodite.” Yet there’s one major caveat: Nebula is asking $16.48 for just 25 minutes of music (from online shop CD Baby), and despite the quality, the EP’s high price is unjustified. –Joshua Sindell
We the People Too Much Noise (Sundazed)
O my ears and THC-stained whiskers! Any devotee of first-wave psychedelic nuggetry already dotes on “Mirror of Your Mind” and “You Burn Me Up and Down,” two exemplary chunks of 1966 Yardbirds-inflected punky ya-ya out of an otherwise-forgotten Orlando quintet still widely recycled on 1960s garage comps. Brace yourselves, fellow tokers, for this Further Inquiry. Here are all the 1966 singles (A’s & B’s), plus a handful of tracks recorded the same year in for an abortive first album on L.A.-indie Challenge label, founded by none other than Gene Autry. Every gorgeously nasty one of the singles was a radio hit nowhere but central Florida, and the band went on to a low-selling stint at RCA Nashville and entropy by 1970. Rock snobs generally give the band tentative props for songwriting above the regional norm, but “By the Rule” does Tommy James & the Shondells better than Paul Revere & the Raiders, and “Free Information” is a jape that could be tweaked into VU’s White Light, White Heat without half trying. “Half of Wednesday” is pure Boyce & Hart, “Alfred, What Kind of Man Are You?” sounds like Flo & Eddie at their snottiest, and “St. John’s Shop” is better than half the lame Britrock spliffs they were smoking in Clubland London back in that far-distant day. Hallucinogens themselves have short shelf lives but this bomb-ass shit ages like Pinot Grand Fenwick. −RG
Published: 11/19/2008
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