The Strange Boys, Be Brave

On Be Brave, The Strange Boys are often amiable and miles from snide--no easy feat for youngsters belonging to the wave of post-Black Lips southern garagers. The Lips, their slimy charm practically seeping through speakers, don't provide an apt sonic or aesthetic reference point. The Strange Boys often sound like trainhopping, post-depression folkie anarchists that stumbled upon an anachronistic stack of mid-60's garage obscurities (or at least a group of kids that starting spinning Beggar's Banquet and The Basement Tapes instead of the usual Sonics' records) rather than menacing rockers you wouldn't want to meet in the proverbial dark alley. Besides, the breezy, sun-dappled and stoned sounds on tracks such as "Da Da" and "Dare I Say" suggest that you'd be much more likely to meet The Strange Boys trying to trade a song for a ride in the back of a greasy pickup.
Lead singer Ryan Sambol's decision to fully exploit the genial croak in his sandpapery voice lends a sort of vulnerable authenticity to the proceedings by conjuring images of a shoeless Huck Finn type. Though his words are typically funny in ponderous or melancholic ways ("Sex is like laughter/You do it differently with different people/And sometimes feel sick after") they're also surprisingly direct. The political affectations of the Texas quintet's debut are dramatically contextualized and reposited here as philosophical protest music playful enough to bring a cracked grin to Woody Guthrie's face--"The man stays the same/The only thing that changes is his face/They never tell you that in class/'Cuz if they did, you'd never come back," goes one youthfully illuminated lament.
The general bluesy clatter and slow-motion prom songs they made their name on are largely absent here. They've breathed in the Austin air and crafted a strangely affecting, humorous record of Americana garage pop. The lo-fi haziness hasn't gone anywhere, but The Boys now use it as a textural complement to their antiquated, organic tunes. Instead of concealing sonic and emotional uncertainty, as is common to tapes-only rockers everywhere, the analogue sound unifies Be Brave by coating everything with a melancholic sepia glaze. While the record is an often sparse, humorous homage to the bygone days of dusty American myth, there are just enough psych-adornments (the loopy sax on the title track, the organ on "Friday in Paris," and the xylophone on "I See" are highlights) to allow The Strange Boys to skirt the cloying stagnations that can befall period obsessives. Sambol's engaging everyman truisms also help to buoy Be Brave above stuffy, self-serious nostalgia.
While Be Brave certainly dials down the noise of the Texan's debut, it is still the work of unabashed garagers that probably spend more time listening to 60's soul rave-ups than Dust Bowl Ballads. In fact, the best song is the infectious "Be Brave," which finds The Boys in swinging, stomping, call-and-response blue-eyed soul territory. Not every song sticks as much as this could-be anthem, though. A couple of the barest, piano-driven tracks barely sustain their momentum for the length of their running time despite the fact that most songs are under three minutes. The young Texans might have been wise to add a few more curious embellishments or at least upped the quotient of chugging guitars and early rock'n'roll piano which so convincingly evoked the feeling of watching endless miles of empty plains disappear through a bus window on "A Walk on the Beach."
That said, The Strange Boys have stumbled on a fairly original, almost always friendly, and often captivating sound. While too many of their peers get by on snarling punk attitude, Be Brave finds success through a genuine, ragged tunefulness. However, if they continue to churn out songs as confident as the title track, these innocents (the record's sex song is awfully queasy) will be jaded by indie-niche stardom in no time.

The Morning Benders, Big Echo

The panoramically evocative Big Echo, the sophomore record from Berkley, California’s The Morning Benders, assuredly unfolds into a work of atmospheric grandeur. The ethereal harmonies of “Stitches” and the title track have more in common with the expansive reverb of fellow Pacific Northwesterners Fleet Foxes than those of The Beach Boys or The Byrds, bands that were often referenced in reviews of The Morning Benders first album Talking Through a Tin Can.

“Excuses” melodically recalls the airy “In an Aeroplane Over the Sea.” Like the Neutral Milk Hotel classic, Big Echo’s opener applies a surrealist sensibility to lyrics that mingle sex and death (“You tripped to taste me/And I taped my tongue to the Southern tip of your body/Our bones are to heavy to come up/Squished in a single cell of wood.”) Though “Excuses” would sound similarly appropriate on a vintage phonograph, it comes bathed in the coral fluidity of a Roy Orbison arrangement, and the unexpected marimba breakdown and wash of wordless doo-wop vocals that close the song reveal The Morning Benders new experimental inclinations. While Talking Through a Tin Can was more firmly rooted in efficient updates of‘60s California pop, Big Echo finds the group exploring lush expanses akin to Grizzly Bear.

That Big Echo is more physically similar to Veckatimest than anything by The Shins—the band that The Morning Benders are most often equated with—hardly comes as a surprise, considering guitarist/singer Christopher Chu co-produced the album with Grizzly Bear bassist/producer. Like Taylor’s band’s most recent effort, Big Echo wafts between luminescent pop and drifting ambience. The punchy, wistful “Promises” and jaunty “Cold War” will be the most pleasing to fans of the first record who came back for more Shins inspired-fare; however, despite the unmistakable similarities between the yelps of James Mercer and Chu, the comparison that haunted Talking Through a Tin Can becomes less applicable as the album becomes increasingly bleary and meandering.

Though Big Echo peaks early with “Excuses,” this isn’t so much evidence of the band’s weaknesses as a consequence of their interest in mood and detail. The phosphorescent summer haze of “Wet Cement” continues the album long fascination with watery textures while plinking, percussive layers rain over the unhurried, dreamy fog of “Pleasure Sighs.” The song eventually erupts into a startling blend of thunderous guitars that are softened by the resounding, diaphanous production.

Cloudy dissonance permeates the remainder of Big Echo, though the tone never fluctuates above moodiness into aggression. The tempo briefly accelerates on the catchy “All Day Day Light,” but lyrically and sonically the emphasis is simultaneously on the oceanic and the myopic as picked guitars, sounding almost like notes from a harpsichord, are sprinkled on the spacious, multi-hued ambience of the track.

Like most of Big Echo, the song summons the swimming pastels of the album art while maintaining a well-mannered precision, reinforcing their similarities to Grizzly Bear while allowing them make an adventurous leap out of the confines that sometimes limited their debut.

Liars, Sisterworld

Liars’ Sisterworld finds the rampant trio on a hellish joyride through a sludgy dystopia. Smothering with an unnerving, atmospheric doom, the toxic air of the album’s most hypnotically foggy moments lulls listeners into a bleary-eyed wasteland. The hiss and gurgle of these oppressive dreamscapes are prone to sudden dissipation, though, as the steely incisors of churning guitars often pierce through the moody drift. Encapsulating the unnerving dynamics of the album, the pummeling chorus rush of lead single “Scissor” mercilessly tramples the more lilting verses. Liars experiment with this chaotic formula over the course of Sisterworld, without quite giving in to the sprawling urges that characterized their early releases. The concussed plod of “Drip” is bedroom life-support set, its dreary electronic discord suggesting the confusion of waking up in intensive care with memories wiped clean. Next, brutally confrontational highlight “Scarecrows on a Killer Slant” ensures that listeners won’t have a second to collect themselves, as frontman Angus Young froths orders (“We should nail their thoughts to the wall/Stand them in the street with a gun/And then kill them all) at his fellow droogs over the massive rise and fall of waves of guitars.

This is Liars at their most disconcerting. Sisterworld feels especially unsettling on the heels of their eponymous fourth album. Though characteristically loud and aggressive, that record found Liars ditching the album-length concepts of their previous releases and featured their most succinct set of songs. Boasting head-banging hybrids of surf pop, biker rock, and anthemic noise that recalled The Jesus and Mary Chain, Sonic Youth, and Nirvana, Liars was full of irresistibly sugary melodies warped by layers of thunderous reverb. The closest relative to Liars here is the snottily cyclonic, acerbic “The Overachievers.” With lyrics like, “We just sat and watched the TV/And smoked weed,” it’s an answer song to the previous album’s peak, the zoned-out mantra “Freak Out.”

Like its predecessor, most of Sisterworld was recorded in Los Angeles. Previously, Liars had jetted across the globe between albums, recording everywhere from Berlin to a cabin in rural New Jersey. Perhaps they’ve remained in L.A. because there was no need for the inspiration that can be gleaned from a change in scenery; on Sisterworld, Liars burrow deeper into their own rabbit hole. From its title suggesting an imagined alternate reality, to the album’s artwork, featuring ornately locked miniature doors; this is a thoroughly insular affair. Liars perfect their singularly eerie brand of pop by upping the production ante. Though Sisterworld’s sound is bulkier and more particular than any previous effort from Liars, every detail is directed toward the construction of a nightmarish atmosphere.

Liars previously explored ambience and on 2004's Drums Not Dead. Here, their gift for crafting evocative soundscapes is wed unholily to their sinister yet addictive songwriting smarts. The childlike catchiness that made songs like Drums’ “The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack” and Liars’ “Pure Unevil” so disarmingly sweet is mutated into the creeping “No Barrier Fun.” ----The initially vulnerable bedroom pop of “An Can Still See an Outside World,” is savagely interrupted by screeching guitars and taunting vocals. Fountain-like electronics add some color to the tense Canisms of “Proud Evolution” and the spiraling horn squalls of “Goodnight Everything” take the song into Spiritualized’s most demented territories. The pan flute keyboards tones of “Too Much, Too Much” provide brightness. The album ender takes a disorienting turn as emotionally vacant, staring-at-the-sun chants pronounce the apocalyptic Sisterworld’s logical conclusion.

Vampire Weekend, Contra

Googling “Vampire Weekend cultural appropriation” yields so many essay length results that it’s difficult to even discuss the bands music without at least a perfunctory nod to the gossipy, contentious contexts that shadow them. On Contra, the band dive headlong into this surrounding discordance, translating it into inspiration and gleefully accepting every tag projected onto them; taught minimalists, mainstream poppers, musical tourists, droll hipster preps—Vampire Weekend deftly handle all these modes on their new album, sometimes in the course of one song. High on pure sonic possibility, the album’s ten tracks effortlessly dart through genres without regard for continental barriers. Current Top 40 sounds that would have betrayed the purity Vampire Weekend strived for have been spliced into the mix. The sparkling, up-to-the-minute contemporaneousness of keyboardist/producer Rostam Batmanglij, who moonlit in hip hop inspired duo Discovery, actually drives more of Contra’s songs then the pristine guitars of the debut.

The architecturally obsessed “White Sky” is Vampire Weekend at their least organic and most innocent, the song’s lyrics about youths in city brilliantly matched by the bright, blockily electronic textures that approximate fast-motion skyscraper construction. The amount of space incorporated into the arrangement and the Richard Serra reference probably weren’t coincidental, and the song’s city-was-made-for-us vibe will rub the band’s detractors the wrong way. That is, if they made it past the couplet of album-opener “Horchata” in which the titular drink is rhymed with “balaclava” over a miniature symphony of marimbas. Contra’s first two tracks are testament to Vampire Weekend’s absorbent powers, though; their radars are as open to the criticisms flung at them by backlashing bloggers as they are to multicultural collaging.

Self-conscious by nature, Contra finds Vampire Weekend fully aware that they toe a unique precipice between indie heroicism and mainstream success, and utterly fascinated by the sounds emanating from both camps. If they are exploiting anything, it’s the very ground they stand on. On Contra, they demonstrate a pan-global, genre-hopping sonic curiosity; consider it equal-opportunity rock if you’re genuinely concerned with cultural usurpation accusations. The members of Vampire Weekend have giddily immersed themselves in the layers of tension surrounding them, though too many critics will reduce Contra’s thematic and creative concerns to juxtaposition.

Contradiction is only part of the larger narrative of wonderment and receptivity. True, the ironic distance between the often tongue-cemented-in-cheek lyrics and the chiming, West Africa informed clarity that made the debut such an interesting listen is a continuing thread in the sophomore effort. “Taxi Cab,” which finds Koenig singing from perspective of a jaded, sighing aristocrat over the band’s pebbliest keyboards, begins in this vein. Quickly enough, though, things become more complicated than a simple balance of opposites. Pulsing strings enter, providing the narration with a sympathetic platform that is augmented by an elegant bridge. The harpsichord-sounding solo might have seemed like a jab at the song’s protagonist if it had the tiny, faux-sophisticated tinkle of the Rushmore soundtrack reminiscent “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa;” instead, recalling George Martin’s sped-up piano in The Beatles’ classic “In My Life,” it supplies gravity to the bemused resignation of the words. “You’re not a victim/But neither am I/We’re nostalgic for garbage/Desperate for time,” Koenig muses, as if he’s just learned that having everyone’s number also includes having his own.

Of this set of songs, the cheery reggae pop of “Holiday” is most reminiscent of Vampire Weekend, though the guitars have an ever so slightly gnarled, surfy edge that would have felt out of place on the band’s debut. The sinewy, Afro Pop inflected guitars and sparse verses of “California English,” when coupled with Koenig’s lyrics concerning the eccentricities of anglophile linguistics, might have harkened back to their first record were the singing not aided by auto-tune and the strings not in Kanye West-triumphant mode. Elsewhere, “Run” surprises with Mariachi horns, shares a title with one New Order single, and flits along on synths that seem quote from another, “Bizarre Love Triangle.” Forget calculated accoutrement—the songs themselves seem to have grown from a gleeful entanglement of such disparate sounds. Nowhere is this more apparent then the sparkling “Diplomat’s Son,” which weaves samples from M.I.A. and Toots and the Maytals, chirping female vocals recalling Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, and swaying harmonies into the vibrant highlight of Contra. Koenig, at his loosest and funniest, buoyantly skips along on the “Pressure Drop” sample for an improbable six minutes and swaps “Peter Gabriel, too” for “I’m gonna take it from Simon/Then I’m gonna duck out behind them.”

Nearly as arresting are the dizzying, cartoonish thrills of “Cousins.” The song’s impossible tempo kicks up more sand than anything else in the band’s brief discography, its mazelike guitars saved from a destructive pace by the last minute addition of a chorus of bells slow things to a safe landing speed. Here, as in “Diplomat’s Son,” the music exudes a wide-eyed willingness to explore and experiment, which is at the effervescent heart of the kaleidoscopically restless Contra.