"Guy Got Kilt"... How Columboid and I Became One.

I've always been one to strongly insist that any album, of any content, is significant if it lends itself to a new personal experience for an individual - or fosters one they may have already had at some time in their lives.  You think about albums that are considered "the best of all time" or simply "the best" by a given artist, and a few things come to mind: (1) If they are heralded as "best of all time", then they were likely best selling records because (a) they appealed to a lot of people on the same level (which is no small task), and/or (b) they were just really well marketed (i.e., any fucking album by the goddamn Beatles). (2) they made an impression on the jadedly unimpressionable (critics) who represent a select fraction of the population that wield the ability to propel them into stardom, or they made a tremendous widespread impact on a larger amount of people who were equally, though maybe less articulately, amazed at what they'd done (think Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot... in both scenarios, come to think of it).  In either case, music is never anything to anyone until it does something for someone. Arguably then, everything ever released meets that criteria for someone; but the true decider of the sides is just how many people were touched.  It's like the analogy that one person praising any single given entity is an unbalanced weirdo... but a bunch of people doing it gives that thing validity and makes the thing Holy - and therefore and therein, all accolades applied to said entity become Gospel.

Purity Ring, Another Latter Day 4AD Impurity

Still trying to build a 2.0 version of the reputation they earned in the mid 80s through mid 90s for nurturing unique and often counter mainstream artists, 4AD records offers us this band - one of their newer acquisitions - Purity Ring.  Their debut release entitled Shrines.

The packaging has all the finesse and intrigue that would normally suggest the creative integrity of a bonfide 4AD act, but that's kind of the one thing the label decided to hold onto when they began the process of surgically altering their once starving artist meets designer brand aesthetic. And it's blatantly obvious that when they signed Purity Ring, someone if not everyone, at the flailing label, had their fingers crossed that this band would be a harbinger for 4AD's reclamation of former glory.

Prairie Shanties of the Landlocked Mariner - Sailing The Seas Of Reid

Summing up the qualities of an artist like singer/songwriter Rob Reid can be a daunting task given that, in this day and age, the most truly brilliant of artists often make it a point to disguise themselves. It's a virtue one wouldn't want to see incarnated any differently, really - there's nothing more satisfying than suspecting the curious and interesting, and seeing your suspicions proven right as rain. 

Let's be frank, though - solo singer/songwriters as a bulk genre, tend to be a dime a dozen. Usually, if not comedic, they're bleeding heart navel gazers with little more to reflect upon than their inner pain, the beauty or misery of life, relationship A or B and/or whatever something or other they deem enchanting today for whatever idle reason.

HighMay - Few Downsides to The Upside

Approving nods tend to seem more deserved  when given in the direction of solo singer/songwriters gone band, more so than in cases of the opposite career order; certainly not always - but in many instances.  HighMay frontman James Atto is one such case in point.  While the work accomplished on his band's debut release The Upside, likely wouldn't have turned out sounding any different if packaged under Atto's name alone, you still tend to like hearing a strong songwriter play well with others.  Atto's fingerprints on Upside may stand out a little clearer than his cohorts' do, but credit remains to the band's ability to wholly manage the careful ebb and flow it takes to sound like a collective with personnel who all have their hearts in it.

12 Track Midwestern Mix Tape Concern

When I noticed that every band I'd grown up with's new material was starting to sound less and less interesting, I started to wonder if the creative wave of awesome that infected the music scene in the late '80's through about 1997 had been systematically vaccinated by corporate record labels and increasingly hoodwinking marketing techniques.  "Remastered Re-releases" for example. What a fucking scam, and way for a stalemate artist to take out a second mortgage on his claim to fame, while simultaneously serving as back up power generator for the inevitably blacked out and doomed major label conglomerates.  Really, the major labels slit their own throats when they got away from seeking out new and unique boutique bands with potential, to instead rest on the laurels of what had already been proven formulas for platinum selling records.  Instead of putting money into promoting interesting new music, they opted for the vehicle of Pepsi advertisements and sixty second Nissan commercials.

The Emotion Defying Feats of The Daredevil Christopher Wright

The label of "novelty act" could very easily be misapplied to a band with the kind of polarizing presence that The Daredevil Christopher Wright has.     Their harmonizing vocal antics, cheeky lyrics and often musically schizophrenic compositions make them a threesome as far from run of the mill as a band can get.  

Piece by piece, the group's influences on In Deference to a Broken Back are obvious, and as a whole, the album's 11 tracks are leaps and bounds from sounding anything like each other.  To its credit, though, while it may be a "mixed disc" sounding album, it stands upright as a collection, even as it manages to separate nicely into clearly very individual segments - and ones that have more value than just existing as ascendant facsimiles of each other.

I woke up to the dubstep-esque percussion and whirly-gig keyboard intro of The Fatty Acids' "Creature" playing on my ipod alarm clock this morning. I'd been at the Riverwest Public House (again, I'll say it - a damn fine venue right next to Linneman's) over a month ago on a night they were slated to play there, but due to an obligation, could not stay to catch their set. I stopped by the merch table, however, and purchased a copy of their newest album, Leftover Monsterface just before leaving.  The guy manning the table saw me looking over their albums for a moment, indecisively trying to choose which among their four available was going to give me the best first impression.  He handed me Monsterface: "This one is awesome. They locked themselves in a basement when they recorded it." Huh. Intriguing. And sold.  

The Substance of...

One would naturally expect an album authored by a banjo-playing, female folk rock vocalist to be despondent little done-me-wrong pluckings about drunken and brutish men, and the various methods by which they've victimized or deflowered an assortment of protagonists.   On Lady Cannon's debut album, on the other hand, appropriately entitled Whiskey Dear, Martha Cannon and her band offer a sneering array of alcohol soaked Canterbury Tales, where the victims are anyone but her,  and told from anything but the typical gudgeon's point of view.

Jack Tell In Other Attire

Arguably, one of the highest marks of a song composition's integrity is its ability to withstand alternate presentation.  As AIHA frontman Jack Tell demonstrated in his brief performance last night at Linneman's Riverwest Inn, the songs on his band's self titled release, easily endured a solo acoustic presentation.

Confessions and Concessions...

photo courtesy Ilana Gilbert, IG Photography

The Riverwest Public House Co-operative seems to be establishing a reputation as frequent host to some of Milwaukee's more avant-garde performers: unconventional folk rock ensembles, piano soloists and other such demiurgic musicians more inclined to use violas and xylophones as their lead instruments than electric guitars and drum kits.  

This past Friday's Women In Music headliners there - The Lady Cannon, Ilysa Spencer and Meadow Parish - while adhering to the use of the more traditional bass, guitar and drum arrangements (though The Lady Cannon did, of course, employ her oft used five string banjo), provided performances that night that were no less intriguing.  Meadow Parish, in particular, lead by Flojo pendant Sarah Marie Spielmann, put on a noteworthy and captivating set.