#rob noyes

Baked – II (Exploding in Sound)

II by Baked

Baked, out of Brooklyn, belches a lava flow of viscous guitar sound over sweetly unassuming pop melodies. If J. Mascis ever wrote a song to impress the women of Look Blue Go Purple, if Beat Happening experimented with a whacked out set of fuzz pedals, it might sound a bit like this – in short, it’s fetching DIY pop with serious muscles under the anorak. When soft, vulnerable tune meets the bristling heft of feedback, there’s a palpable fizz, never more so than on “Hope You’re Happy,” sung by Isabella Mingione. “The Hartlett Anthem” does the same trick with Jeremy Aquilino singing tender hooks over the droning surf of dissonance like a sleepier Teenage Fanclub. This particular recording is Baked’s third, after 2014’s Debt and 2017’s Farnham but earns the “II” by being the second in Exploding in Sound’s Tape Club series. That’s undoubtedly why it’s so short, but brevity is tantalizing. These five songs leave you wanting more.

Jennifer Kelly

 Big Blood — Operate Spaceship Earth Properly (Feeding Tube Records)

Massachusetts-based Feeding Tube Records favors such a frantic release schedule that it’s easy to miss the consistently strange, often delightful albums they spit out. Earlier this summer, the label dropped Operate Spaceship Earth Properly, a fresh & freaky 45-minutes of scuzzy psychedelia from Big Blood. The Portland, ME duo of Colleen Kinsella and Caleb Mulkerin — joined here in some capacity by their daughter, Quinnisa — have been delivering properly furry trips since the 1990s, originally as founders of Cerberus Shoal. The spin this time involves a tip of the hat to authors such as Octavia Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin via a science fiction-inspired song cycle. Yet, concept aside, the songs have serious teeth, stomping forward in a heady slop of bullying riffs, martial drumming and Kinsella’s third-eye rants. It’s headphone music for the deep forest, a turned-on reality-strip far more properly psychedelic than the jammed-out noodling frequently paraded by those dressed in thrifted tie dyes. Listen at your own risk; be changed.  

Ethan Covey

  Manu Delago—Parasol Peak (One Little Indian)

Manu Delago, a classically trained percussion who specializes in the steel-drum-like instrument known as a hang, isn’t doing things the easy way. For this album and the accompanying film, he convened a chamber group of seven people and led them, instruments and all, on a mountaineering expedition in the albums (pity the cellist). These eight tracks were recorded outside, in all kinds of weather, using natural elements like sticks, rocks and trees for additional textures. The result is a rather lovely blend of percussion-dappled Reichian minimalism, augmented by the sounds of water, thunder and wind. The music works its way to the summit, beginning in the leafy, sun-warmed environs of “Parasol Woods,” where reedy, breathy clarinet and pensive trombone catch the light sparkling off intricate webs of tonal percussion. By “Ridge View,” sounds have turned chillier and more remote; flute and chimes are buffeted by gales of wind. A mournful, solitary whistle frames “Listening Glacier,” a trebly coating of ice on a grounding drone of cello, but there is exuberance and accordion wheezing triumph in “Parasol Peak.” Fingers and lips must be pretty frozen all round by this point, but a warm, pulsing joy emanates from this brass-y, syncopated reel. The question arises: why would anyone do such a difficult thing?  But the answer is right there in the accompanying video. Because it was beautiful, because it was hard and because it made a sound no other new chamber group could make, with woods, mountains, stones and  physical effort built right in.

Jennifer Kelly

 Ethers—Ethers (Trouble in Mind)

s/t by Ethers

Ethers spun out of the late Chicago drone-punk-garage outfit Heavy Times, pulling front man Bo Hansen and bassist Russell Calderwood into this new enterprise and adding Calderwood’s wife Mary McKane and drummer Matt Rolin. Along the way, Hansen et al seem to picked up a heightened appreciation for melody and hook (and percolating keyboards thanks to McKane). “It’s a Rip-Off” lurches and jitters on slashed guitar riffs and hard, straight up and down drumming, but there’s an undeniable lilt in its fuzzy tune, and “Emily” balances bluster and tenderness in equal parts. If Heavy Times drove a post-punk freight train through a long, shadowy tunnel, Ethers breaks out into sunshine on the other side of the mountain, the darkness in the music but not all of it. “Something” ends the disc on a high note, chiming guitar notes streaking like meteors down to a burnt-bare beat, an intoxicating smell of sleeping gas all around.

Jennifer Kelly

 Iron & Wine — Weed Garden (Sub Pop)

Sam Beam has somehow become a master of the EP. Last year's full-length Beast Epic from Iron & Wine received critical acclaim and a Grammy nomination, but it never really settled the way much of his earlier work had. Given that Weed Garden draws from that album's leftovers, the new EP could have been a quick toss-off to turn a few dollars on otherwise dead songs. Happily, though, Beam delivers a strong, quick set. Where he had traded in resignation, this one starts with an immediate rally, the call in “What Hurts Worse” to “become the lovers we need.” His awareness of brokenness becomes the grounds for a fragile restoration, his voice and the smooth production serving the message.

A few years old but until now unreleased, “Waves of Galveston” brings the necessary precision to a complicated situation, and the continuing Croce-like sound fits the mood perfectly. “Last of Your Rock 'n' Roll Heroes” brings a steady bounce to a series of impressions that eventually give way to the darkness. Closer “Talking to Fog” uses language to resist pending dissipation, offering gentleness among hardness and “reaching out” despite knowing safer options. Beam's writing relies on visuals until he makes blurry images come into focus, even if he maintains that “it's hard to find.” It's a strong statement from Beam, an album's worth of care in a little EP, again.

Justin Cober-Lake

  The Lavender Flu — Mow the Glass (In The Red)

Heavy Air, The Lavender Flu’s 2016 debut was a double album of feel-bad rock sent forth from the Pacific Northwest damp to soundtrack an endless bummer. Chris Gunn, formerly of The Hunches and Hospitals, assembled the album at home, on analog tape, building and reworking the tracks into one of the year’s most impressive collages of sound. The second time around, with Mow the Glass, the approach is different. Here, Gunn is backed by a proper band — brother Lucas Gunn, former Hunches drummer Ben Spencer and Eat Skull’s Scott Simmons. Those folks all lent a hand to Heavy Air, yet here they are in the same room, playing together to the buzz of warmed amps and a view of the sea. The album is trim and clear, focusing Gunn’s aesthetic without losing sight of the mindset that got him here in the first place. A couple of cuts from the first LP — “Demons in the Dark,” a cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “Like a Summer Thursday” — reappear with fresh coats of paint. “You Are Prey” begins tipsy and unraveling, with the band chasing a whip of stereo-panning guitar, before setting into a reverb-rich ballad. The mood is subtlety sunnier throughout, like a crack of light on the horizon viewed from the soak of a storm.  

Ethan Covey

  Long Hots — Monday Night Raw (Self-Released)

Monday Night Raw by Long Hots

You should listen to Trouble Anyway, the new LP by Rosali Middleman. Middleman is a talented songwriter, but part of what makes Trouble Anyway so listenable is its lush instrumentation, all-star band, and pristine production. Middleman is also a member of The Long Hots, and their debut tape, Monday Night Raw sounds, by contrast, like it was recorded on a Fisher-Price tape deck by a band with about three weeks of musical experience between them. It’s glorious. The members of Long Hots are rock and roll lifers, so Monday Night Raw’s amateurism is both affected and effective, and sure to satisfy anyone who thinks Here Are the Sonics!!! is too slick. Of particular note is the ten minute “Boogie Trance,” which delivers exactly what it promises, no more, and “Die Die Die,” the chorus of which goes, you guessed it, “Die, Die, Die, Die.”  

Isaac Olson

  Paul Lydon — Sjórinn Bak Viò Gler (Paul Lydon)

sjórinn bak við gler by Paul Lydon

When you’re on your own, labels don’t mean much. Paul Lydon is an American musician who has been based in Reykjavik, Iceland since the mid-1990s. His discography is small, and he’s never made the same record twice. He’s sung alone and with a partner, in English and Icelandic, and kept the accompaniment varied each time. On Sjórinn Bak Viò Gler there is no singing at all, but it’s the most lyrical music of his recording career. The album’s title translates as The Sea Behind, and given Iceland’s prevailing clime you might want to keep it that way until there’s a closed door behind it and you. Lydon’s touch on the instrument betrays close acquaintance, and it’s easy to imagine him spending hours playing and ruminating on what he’s played. It doesn’t fall easily into any genre; its stream-of-consciousness flow is too perambulating for pop, too elaborate for minimalism and it doesn’t fall easily into any classical form. So let’s not worry about what it isn’t, and instead appreciate its confidently open-ended melodies and comfortably solitary mood.

Bill Meyer          

 Thee Open Sex — White Horses (Sophomore Lounge)

THEE OPEN SEX "White Horses" by Thee Open Sex

Indiana might seem like an odd place to give birth to a combo committed to diving deep into Krautrock concepts but think again. You’ve got highways and flat land that doesn’t afford much of a view once you’re over the cornfields; what could be more practical than motoric music? The Open Sex makes music that’ll whittle away the road miles, and White Horses is cut precisely to get you 35 minutes closer to home. That’s how long guitarist John Dawson and drummer Tyler Damon bear down on a groove that’s more metronomic than equine. Three guests use their playing as a foundation for a wheeling superstructure of squelchy notes and spacey textures. This is white line meditation music; be sure to stay mindful of the weight of your foot upon the gas.

Bill Meyer

 Rob Noyes & Ryan Lee Crosby — Modal Improvisations on 34 Strings (Cabin Floor Esoterica)

[CFE#68] Modal Improvisations on 34 Strings by Rob Noyes & Ryan Lee Crosby

On record and in concert, 12-string guitarist Rob Noyes displays a clarity of intent that you don’t often see from an artist who is young and new. But not only does he keep his picking clean and lyrical through rustic rounds and mystery-laden excursions, he keeps his head in the presence of a very different guitarist. Ryan Lee Crosby plays chaturangui, a sort of hybrid veena / dobro guitar developed by Debashish Bhattacharya. The chaturangui is suited to the swoop and chime of Hindustani ragas, and that’s how Crosby plays it. Noyes embroiders the contours of his partner’s voluptuous lines and pushes back with pure-sound strumming. He manages to sound quite supportive and engaged without compromising the very different character of his playing. This short (not quite 28 minutes) tape is a typically atypical Cabin Floor Esoterica product; home-dubbed and hand-wrapped, a first edition has already gone out of print, but a second run is imminent.

Bill Meyer  

 Riesgo — Demo MMXVIII (Self-released)

Demo MMXVIII by RIESGO

It’s not often that you can claim a tape is both a throwback to and a continuation of a vital movement in punk, but listen to Riesgo’s new demo. You can hear both of those historical trajectories as soon as “Lobxs” kicks it. The bass’s rubbery warbling and the guitars’ razoring buzz recall the initial tones of Black Flag’s “Nervous Breakdown.” Then Carlos Ruiz starts singing, and the tape’s sound snaps into sharper focus. Chicago’s South Side, Latinx punks, thrashy attitude: Riesgo have picked up the baton from the excellent and underappreciated Sin Orden, who in turn had received it from the nigh-legendary Los Crudos. (Or, in a couple cases, band members just held onto the baton: Ruiz sings for Sin Orden, and Jose Casas played guitar for Los Crudos.) Razacore is alive and angry. That’s good news, and very timely. Given our current national moment — the current bullshit hating on Latino American identity and the reactionary responses to the violence in Chicago — this bolus of pissed off, politically fierce punk is precisely what’s needed. “Ahógate” is a standout track. The vocals and lead guitar are pretty unhinged, while the rest of the band hammers away at a compelling hardcore riff. It’ll sound great in a sweaty basement. Viva, Riesgo!

Jonathan Shaw

  Rocket 808 — Digital Billboards b/w Mystery Train (12XU)

Digital Billboards b/w Mystery Train by Rocket 808

Rocket 808 is the latest incarnation of the garage guitar phenomenon John Schooley, whom you might remember from the Revelators (or if not, enjoy this set of Billy Childish covers laid to tape in a record store in Columbia, MO in 1996). A frequent solo performer (his website is called John Schooley and his One Man Band), Schooley does it all on these two tracks. “Digital Billboards” overlays the cheerful cheesiness of a vintage drum machine with incandescent flares of whammy and deep reverbed guitar darkness. Surf rock, sure, but evil and skeletal and scary, with shades of Suicide in the wild ghostly automatism. Side two’s “Mystery Train” amps up the rockabilly, the drum machine cranked to the breaking point, the guitar arcing and spitting in turbulent bursts. Schooley sings on this one, steering classic blues lines around hard bends until they lift off the pavement. This sort of blues-referencing, early-rock-aware music always has an element of parody, but Rocket 808 seems less performance-art-ish than Bob Log III or Heavy Trash. It’s dark and dangerous, a heightened reality rather than a pose.

Jennifer Kelly

 Sam Weinberg — A/V/E (Anticausal)

A/V/E by Sam Weinberg

Sam Weinberg has contributed some raw sax to some harsh ensemble settings, particularly the duo W-2 and various gigs with Weasel Walter. But when he closes the door to his Brooklyn apartment, things get real. The sounds from outside his window and on his kitchen table prove equally valuable as he constructs a mutating environment out of inscrutable industry, passing traffic and critters, the mechanical parts of his horns and some vigorously scoured surfaces. This is the stuff of life, or at least Weinberg’s life. Layer upon layer of sonic activity coexists like the residents of a big old NY apartment building, close in proximity yet not particularly interested in each other.

Listen for instance, to the way that the rapid, percussive picking of “Vout” melts and wavers, the hard strike of pick on string shifting as it resonates, shadowed by ghostly images. And yet, even the most frenetic, string-slamming passages have a cool lucidity; it is easy to follow the song’s main line even shrouded as it is by a luminous miasma of sound.

Noyes is a follower of Leo Kottke, pursuing the same clarity and control as the master, even as his hands move at blur speed over the strings. Yet for every lighting quick, lush, orchestral “Sniper’s Dream” or “Tackbeater,” there’s a slow, pristine ballad, like “Pishamare,” whose stately dignity is undergirded by the plainest sort of rhythmic picking. To borrow a phrase from the Quakers, “It’s a gift to be simple”— and, they might add, not as easy as it looks.

Elsewhere, as on “Old Devils,” Noyes plays with form, executing intricate melodic figures with casual aplomb, beginning in a very traditional-sounding blues form and pushing at it, shifting keys and tempos. It’s a measure of his skill that the difficulty dissolves into pure musical sensation. You don’t think about how hard he’s working, only about how quick and pretty and clean the song is.

In another instance of how contrary life can be, the song that I could live in is just over one minute long. It’s called “And How,” and it is at once sunny and contemplative, with flurries of picking that suddenly resolve in hanging bent notes. It feels like the inside of a pleasant mental wander, with light coming in the window and nothing very pressing on the calendar. Noyes creates a complete little musical world in the time it takes to heat up coffee, its architecture clear but surrounded with a little mystery.