Seventeen Evergreen :: "Angels"

It will be hard to return to that moment in 2005 when Interpol's second LP, Antics, arrived in my mailbox. George Bush was just beginning his second term in office and like the rest of America's college students I was waiting out the cultural malaise by getting lost in a vaguely highfalutin vocabulary and a criminally low self-awareness. Needless to say, I loved it, the record. But as Interpol made themselves irrelevant, the aesthetic they carefully revived went begging in search of a new Dickensian master. Seventeen Evergreen could be exactly this band with lead single, "Angels", a dark post-punky meditation that would remind you of "Public Pervert", only if the torch-like guitars were turned into a broken lighter, flicking sparks over and over into a cupped and covered palm. It rings dark and detached, the kind of thing that wouldn't let you get close enough to make out its figure, let alone see its face. But, the nostalgia is for a band and a moment now gone, and the hopes of a new one, signed to a fantastic label, set to release their second record in the spring. That feeling of drifting, lost in a sea of guitars, hopes for the future set against terrifying geopolitical backdrops isn't new and it isn't supposed to be. You sense Seventeen Evergreen won't care about these comparisons and memories, but you will, a bit at least, before you move on to whatever happens next, sparks in the darkness and five-dollar words in your final research thesis.

Listen :: Seventeen Evergreen - "Angels"

Bowerbirds :: "Tuck The Darkness In"

It could be complicated, you see, not something like these trope-driven Hollywood stories where happiness or misery feel predestined, granted or given. The resolution of your internal disjoints could be a poly-narrative, something irritatingly post-modern, assigned and read in a 300-level Comparative Literature class; something you took to complete your minor in English and never totally enjoyed. But now this is your life. That story within a story, your reading for semiotic forms, your deconstructionism, you are left to reason it out. Bowerbirds, a folk outfit that doesn't always play folk music, suggest embracing even these darkest contradictions. The pseudo-intellectualism that robbed you of your aesthetic sensibilities, you will have to fold it in. The memories of your formative years, alternately dulcet and dark, will have to exist each. "Tuck The Darkness In" aims at exactly this moment, what they call "before the weight was on our shoulders ... before I knew time was such a swindler". Sure, it is death that hangs over all of us, the one lasting architect of narrative that even the most creative artists in the Western tradition couldn't kill. But Bowerbirds live in the moment between aging and getting old, a song that begins in the Andrew Kenny school of hushed folk and ends with a crashing conclusion that should make Fleet Foxes suitably embarrassed about their catalog. The conclusion? Death is upon us in every moment, yes, but even the most inescapable truths can be put aside, or better, brought close like the covers under our chins.

Listen :: Bowerbirds - "Tuck The Darkness In"

Tribes :: "We Were Children"

Last January the Vaccines stood on the stage of the Bowery Ballroom and played B-side "We're Happening". The chorus screamed the eponymous lyric. It was deathly appropriate for a British band about to storm the wallets and music libraries of US music consumers, especially because they knew something we did not: They had one of the best rock records of 2011. Next in line for this dramatic irony is Tribes, a London four-piece so steeped in Britpop it will make you dig up some old Suede record you haven't listened to since 1994. Though Tribes is considerably rougher than the aforementioned or Manic Street Preachers, bands that so defined the rise of the genre but weren't Oasis. On "We Were Children", arguably the band's thesis statement, Tribes chants, "Oh no, stranger, you're just like me/these things happen/we were children in the mid-90s." Now, loosely interpreted, this could apply to just about everyone you are friends with, one of those broad swaths of nostalgia that make you think about singing "Champagne Supernova", your first cheap beer and riding around in the backs of cars. It is instantly memorable, a series of modulated pitches that seep in with the the immediacy of a spilled drink in a shag carpet. You're almost helpless in the face of it. Or, put another way, this is happening.

Listen :: Tribes - "We Were Children"

The band plays Mercury Lounge and Glasslands (both with the stunning We Barbarians) next Thursday and Friday, December 8 and 9. Their debut record will be out in January.

Jonquil :: "It's My Part"

Oxford, England quartet, Jonquil made our list for bands who would almost certainly break out in 2011. Well, lists are subjective and despite a thoroughly well-received CMJ, the band hasn't exactly cracked AAA-radio, even with recent single, "Mexico". Still, the band might just be squaring up 2012 as their year to breakout and crossover as we look relentlessly into the future while only casually addressing the present. Things we know: the album will be called Point Of Go and will be released on March 5, 2012. Lead track (actually track three) from the record, "It's My Part" is another piece of the band's signature angular, glittering pop. Ebullient and unrestrained, this has a darker hue - it could be the title lyric and chorus - but a back-beat and dancing shoes to match lines like, "I decided that I would fear the world." Sunny guitars chime with all the heedless yearning of some young, stupid, unrequited love story. "It's My Part" is only the beginning, to be sure.



Listen :: Jonquil - "Mexico"

Spacecamp :: "Miko D.T.B."

It will have been a long time since you had this much fun listening to a rock band from New York City. Spacecamp with their debut EP Alibi just released on Tuesday, offer up lead single, "Miko D.T.B" or, if we can gather from the song's first lyrics, "Miko dropped the ball." What emerges is a song in two movements, the first a glittering array of synths and angular guitars that almost recall the dulcet tones of Tigercity (although, for other animal references, there's some Wolfgang in there too), centering on the lyric, "Pull yourself together", a useful and pragmatic notion if there ever was one. The second half of the arrangement is fuller, climatically organized around a sea of backing vocals and a finishing kick that feels like a Local Natives jam shot full of amphetamine and rocked into outer space. Spacecamp still urges you to "Pull yourself together" but the bass line is so alive and well, so bordering on out of control, that it's hard to believe they mean it. Instead, maybe the point is to lose your damn mind.  

The band plays their EP release party at The Wooly in the Financial District with Computer Magic on December 1st.

Miko D.T.B. by SPACECAMP

Deleted Scenes :: "Bedbedbedbedbed"

For all of you biding your time with Pepper Rabbit (wait, that sounded terse; let's start over). For anyone who enjoyed Pepper Rabbit's recent material (softer, good), especially the truly sublime, "Rose Mary Stretch", you need to be listening to Deleted Scenes latest single, "Bedbedbedbedbed". (No, I think they're aware it's not a real word.) In full disclosure this owes even more to the grand tradition of creepy caring as laid out by James Mercer and the Shins than you might be entirely comfortable with. Here, she (and there's always a woman) is described as "an immaculate girl sent from above". Ditch your irony for a moment and take this at face value. The rumbling drums and echoing keys build the architecture within which a hooky, little chorus (and there's always a chorus) focuses on the title lyric, the head nodding, "crawl into my bed, bed, bed, bed, bed". Even the dissonant bridge can't make this edict feel weird. Some things need saying five times. Some things don't even need the space bar or a parenthetical interior monologue (there's always an interior monologue).

On The List :: The Jezabels @ Mercury Lounge [11.21.11]

After running through set opener "A Little Piece," Jezabels keyboardist Heather Shannon and guitarist Samuel Lockwood look to the soundboard at the back of the Mercury Lounge and request more center vocals in their monitors. Like the rest of the room, they want to hear Hayley Mary. With apologies to her bandmates, the diminutive black-clad Aussie is the only person in the room who will matter for the next hour. In short order, she rips through "Endless Summer" and "Easy to Love," her impossibly powerful, soaring voice bolstered by the sound tech who turned her up in the mix. He understands. We all do.

Mary, drinking tea from a cheap bodega cup throughout the set, starts off tightlipped and serious -- barely acknowledging the crowd between songs -- but loosens up as she sheds layers of leather. During a quiet moment, one of the collected Australians in the audience yells out "Are you going out?" The singer smiles and answers ruefully: "We've got a lot of driving ahead. It's actually all we do ever." You find yourself hoping she doesn't sing in the van. The windows can't handle those pipes.

"Mace Spray" is good. "Try Colour" is great. "Hurt Me" is (once again) briefly transcendent. Mary finishes singing the last song of night while the band's final notes reverberate around the room. She grabs her tea from the amp, walks off stage, and, amazingly, disappears into the crowd.

Listen :: The Jezabels - "Try Colour"