Review: Ergo, multitude, solitude

 Ergo

multitude, solitude

A-   (if you’re into that sort of thing)

D    (if you’re not)

Ergo’s new album multitude, solitude comes with a nifty insert that features an early review/glowing praise lauding Ergo’s brilliance.  Barry Vacker, professor of media, cultural and utopian theory at Temple University, opens the adulation with just three words: “Ergo is cool.”

Not so fast, Ergo.

I’ll dismiss for a moment the hubris that motivates a band to put “We are cool” in the first line of the literature that ships with the album.  Let’s do a brief rundown of “cool.”  Elvis was cool for a while.  Then The Beatles were cool, and then some other bands were cool (including, but not limited to, The Clash, Run DMC, and more recently Vampire Weekend in that Vineyard Vines-y sort of way).  Ergo, I mean, God, of all people you should know what’s cool, you’re from Brooklyn of all places.  You’re from the Mecca of tight-pants, I liked-cool-before-it-was-cool cool.  But you know what really isn’t that cool?  Ambient music.

And that’s what multitude, solitude is.  Ambient, experimental, atmospheric music.  A lot of drum, a wailing trombone, a little gentle piano, and synth.  It’s not terrible stuff, Ergo.  The fact that you can make discord work, that you can turn the intentionally not-melodious into music is an accomplishment.  The tracks almost uniformly start near-silent, build with straggling cymbal strikes and held trombone notes into a chaotic mess, and crash in on themselves.  If atmosphere is what you’re going for, you’ve struck gold.  Your album is at once creepy, suspenseful, and dizzying.

But that doesn’t make multitude, solitude cool.  It makes the album play like the soundtrack to an avant-garde student film that doesn’t exist.  It makes the album sound like something a professor of music theory would put together meticulously while designing lesson plans on freeform neo-jazz. 

It also doesn’t make me want to listen to multitude, solitude again anytime soon.

--Dan Bliss, 
“Their Early Stuff is Better,” Thurs 6-7 pm/Fri 12-1 pm on WGTB

Review: Communist Daughter, Soundtrack to the End

 Communist Daughter 

Soundtrack to the End

B+

With a band name referencing Neutral Milk Hotel and tracks titled “Fortunate Son” and “Speed of Sound,” you have to wonder how much newcomers Communist Daughter were going for originality points on their debut release, Soundtrack to the End.  But if they don’t draw many comparisons to NMH – they sound at once modest, clean, and light – that doesn’t mean they’re bad, not by a longshot. 

It’s hard to pick out what provides the cohesiveness to Soundtrack.  For the first three tracks, some Southern-tinged riffs and a giddy-up drumbeat drive the album steadily and catchily along.  Vocalist Johnny Solomon’s mutter-singing invokes The Shins (think: “New Slang”) and Iron and Wine.  What really shine, though, are the wispy harmonies featured on tracks like “Speed of Sound” and “Oceans,” which provide Solomon a female counterpoint.  If there is a silkiness to some of these tracks that stands in stark contrast to the band’s titular antecessors, it is because of these paper-thin harmonies.  Indeed, those middle tracks that are rougher around the edges – “Fortunate Son,” for instance – are the most middling parts of Soundtrack.    

There is a sadness to Communist Daughter’s music, both lyrically and melodically, but it is not accompanied by pessimism.  Those lilting harmonies hint at hope, as do Solomon’s lyrics in even the most downbeat of songs on Soundtrack, like “Minnesota Girls.”  On that track, the last one on the album, Solomon pushes out the words “I don’t owe you nothing/But blue skies.”  Sadness today, happiness tomorrow.  That’s what Communist Daughter sounds like.  And while I can’t give Soundtrack to the End a glowing review today, I’m looking forward to what Solomon and co. produce in years to come.  

-- Dan Bliss

"Their Early Stuff is Better," Thurs. 6-7 pm, Fri. 12-1 pm on WGTB

Review: Jon and Roy "Another Noon," "Sittin' Back"

Jon and Roy

"Another Noon" (2008) B-

"Sittin' Back" (2005) C -

You have to respect an artist unafraid to make a principled stand. It's hard not to side with Michael Stipe and Trent Reznor, who last year spoke out against the use of their songs during bouts of torture at Guantánamo Bay. Sirs Paul McCartney and Elton John have similarly lambasted British government proposals to disconnect music thieves from the Internet, and more power to them. So, let me be the first to officially rally behind Canadian duo Jon and Roy, whose neo-reggae-folk tracks, from "First Thing in the Mornin'" to "Drinkin' and Thinkin'," seem to lobby for the elimination of the letter G from the English language.