Month: May 2016

Dog pile!

Within the last week or so a new Radiohead album came out. The ubiquitous, reviews, reactions and think-pieces made me want to kill myself, but that’s just what Thom Yorke and those jerks in Radiohead would want me to do.

So instead, I listened to Pile by Austin’s A Giant Dog and found it to be an enjoyable slice of old-fashioned, ass-kicking, self-aware and slightly campy rock music. The band’s third release for Merge Records is just a really solid, fun album–basically the opposite of a Radiohead release.

Pile is basically every redeeming quality of FM Rock Radio jammed onto one disc. It’s bombastic, there’s guitar shredding, folksier contemplative songs and the phrase “Rock’n’Roll” can be belted out with abandon in the choruses of multiple songs.

There’s also a cheeky sense of humor to the proceedings, which could be distracting in an Eagles of Death Metal way if executed poorly, but when listening to the album, it becomes pretty clear the band has lots and lots of love for the rock radio they draw their sound from. Plus, the jokes are generally self-effacing or skewering a certain dirtball lifestyle that I get the impression A Giant Dog are more than a bit familiar with.

It also helps that Sabrina Ellis, who splits vocal duties with guitarist Andrew Cashen, has an amazingly charismatic set of pipes. Really, you couldn’t ask for a bandleader who sounds like their having more fun, and it’s infectious as underscored by the video below.

 

 

This almost isn’t the greatest album ever made, but Pile is the most unbridled joy I’ve head in a while, and it’s kind of perfect over a car stereo on a summer day.

Don’t sleep on Car Seat Headrest

While Will Toledo had toiled on bandcamp under the name  Car Seat Headrest for almost a half-decade gradually gaining production values and band members, it was last year’s very good album Teens of Style that put the band on most people’s radar. (Including me).

Teens of Style was something of a greatest hits record of Car Seat Headrest material from 2010-12, and it’s success ensured the next release from Toledo and company would have an actual budget and an anticipatory audience.

It’s follow-up album, Teens of Denial does not disappoint, but it does surprise.

The Julian Casablancas-esque vocals and early Dylan Baldi project garage rock vibe are intact, but there are also Frank Black howls, sloppy guitar-God jams reminiscent of (pick your ’90s shoegaze rocker of choice for a point of reference),  lyrical allusions to Pavement and even a re-working of the most famous song by The Cars.

The insistent, building guitar noise on “Vincent” also gives me a serious Television vibe, but without the interplay of another guitar.

There’s also a variety to the instrumentation to match the varied influence. There’s xylophone, horns, moments of  call and response, unexpected studio chatter and even some neat swirling production effects that are super enjoyable in headphones.

This isn’t the usual case of a lo-fi band hitting the studio, losing their reverb and calling it growth. The invested resources really seem to have lead to some shifts, changes and worthwhile experimentation without losing a grounded, DIY sensibility.

Pleasant production surprises aside, Teens of Denial is also an unexpectedly thematically heavy album. There’s examinations of  mortality, morality and what it means to define yourself by interpersonal relationships. Plus, self-degrading tales of drug trips and drunk driving enter the fray.

The oddball stylistic shifts and a genuine sense of humor keep things from being all doom and gloom. Somehow even pontification on death terror is delivered with awry sense of humor and there are some moments of guitar-shredding release that are pure bliss.

The one-two punch of “1937 State Park” and “Unforgiving Girl (She’s Not an)” in the middle of the album is an absolute highlight for me. They’re a tandem of weird rockers that leave you excited for but unsure of what will come next.

Teens of Denial is an early favorite for my album of the year pick. Listen to it immediately.