On his latest record, the portent We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves, John Maus delivers on the premise that he is "nothing except the making of music" with a highly imagined and singular artistic statement. Now, Maus has been dinged for both his artificiality and zealousness in the past, but here he embraces those polar qualities, somehow escaping with his authenticity intact. Take the mercilessly inciting "Cop Killer" or the mature goth-pop love song "Quantum Leap" for instance. Maus cleverly employs dialectics and genuine sarcasm throughout the album to illustrate his own ambivalent nature.

Backed only by bass, keyboards, and a drum machine, Maus flames through 32 minutes of baroque electro-pop like a hypomanic evangelist, his high-gravity baritone scaring the hell out of anyone listening. I heard that if you repeat "John Maus" three times in front of a mirror with the lights out that he will appear and steal away your firstborn. But seriously, if the rapturous sincerity of album closer "Believer" doesn't make you one, nothing will.

That comparison has never made sense to me—Elvis never wrote a single note, while Diamond's legacy is that of a songwriter, much more than that of a singer or performer (or movie star, for that matter). Having come up through the Brill Building School in the '60s, Diamond became an unlikely pop star in 1966 with "Solitary Man," his first record for Bang Records, which set off a magnificent two-year string of recordings that should rightly be the bulk of his legacy.

Should be. But with the sole exception of a 1983 collection of 12 remixed and re-recorded tracks from Diamond's 1966-67 Bang heyday, that period of his career has remained woefully out of print, with many of Diamond's best songs remaining unissued for nearly 40 years. The long overdue The Bang Years, due out tomorrow on Columbia/Legacy, goes a good way of correcting this oversight, collecting the 23 original mono mixes that Bang! released in 1966 and 1967.

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Or so I thought until I heard Wolf People. I didn't know anything about this band when I put the CD in: where they were from, what kind of music it was. It had a Jagjaguwar label on it, which is an excellent stamp of approval, but that's as much as I knew. Then retro-stoner psychedelic prog began creeping out of the speakers, and I knew immediately that I loved this band.

Wolf People sound like a cross between Cream and Jethro Tull, with a chilly British-Isles folk twinge. But the guitars are heavy and blues-riffy, the drums swing, the lyrics swirl in mythic imagery, and the compositions move adeptly through several disparate pieces. The songs on their debut full-length Steeple bear ridiculous titles like "Cromlech" and "One by One from Dorney Reach," which is simply bad ass. In short, it's a Brit-prog nerd's finest fantasy (I don't not fit into that camp), but it's better than just a retro retread: It's inventive, dynamic, and a lot of the time, it fucking rocks.

Here's the single. It's not the best track on Steeple by a long shot, but it's still terrific. It's the only song on the record with flutes, if that ends up being a little to Tull-y for you.

LISTEN:

Wolf People - "Tiny Circle"

Wolf People come from London, and Steeple was recorded partly in Wales. They're fronted by a chap named Jack Sharp. They don't have any US dates booked yet, but you can expect that to change. They host an excellent blog which includes selections from drummer Tom Watt's vast collection of obscure Finnish records. They're one of my favorite new things I've heard in months. Expect big things. Steeple comes out October 12.

More review and an audio track after the jump.

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Ezra isn't the only one trumpeting the work of Laura "Two Beers" Veirs. The Portlander nabbed a "Critics' Choice" in today's New York Times. An except:

("Summer of the Champion" is) full of texture... You almost want to run your hands across it and feel the nicks in the wood grain, or order it off the appetizer menu in your town’s new warehouse-district restaurant run by a ruddy-faced genius with a beard. And so with the rest of Ms. Veirs’s new record, “July Flame,” named after a farmer’s market peach. It’s full of layered folk and indie-rock bucolia and plain-spoken but stretchy-thinking language, wherein everyday energies or objects transubstantiate into other, metaphorically richer ones.

Read the whole thing here

Perhaps it's due to pressure from Vampire Weekend's recent revival of his legendary dad, but 37-years-young Harper Simon stopped slacking and finally released his debut album. Not surprisingly, Simon has a natural talent for writing hearty folk music and Harper Simon is a solid, impressive album that should turn heads regardless of whose sperm he is. Of course there's only so much Simon can do to escape sky-high expectations and his vocal chord's DNA, but he's clearly finding his own voice as a singer/songwriter. Sometimes Simon escapes his pop's short, prematurely bald shadow into sunny territory more like the rural South, where Elliott Smith is happily drinking a mint julip. Songs like "Wishes and Stars" and "Berkeley Girl" unfortunately just sound like re-planted Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme while songs like "All to God" and "Ha Ha" sound like cheerful echoes from Mister Misery's tomb. There's also plenty of barn burners like "Tennessee" and "Shooting Star" but the highlight is when he sounds like his own man on "Cactus Flower Rag."

LISTEN:

Harper Simon - "Cactus Flower Rag"

Harper Simon plays at Mississippi Studios (3939 N Mississippi) on Fri Dec 11, 9:30 pm, $12.

Ray Davies has not ultimately side-stepped the geezer syndrome that almost every rocker his age has succumbed to, but he hasn't tarnished his damn-near unbeatable legacy nearly as bad as some of his peers. In fact, his Portland show last year was one of the best concerts in recent memory, sounding vital and alive. But this... this has happened.

I don't know who this record is for. Kinks fans? Chorus fans? A song like "Waterloo Sunset" can't be entirely killed by a Christmassy sounding choir ooh-ing in the background, but some of the other songs don't fare so well.

LISTEN:

Ray Davies & The Crouch End Festival Chorus - "Picture Book"

Ugh. I need a hot bath and an original copy of Village Green Preservation Society, stat.

Two totally unrelated notes about Brighten The Corners:
The day the record came out, a little over a decade ago, my friend Jenny was enjoying it so much that she ran a red light and totaled her car while listening to it. I view this as a positive sign for the album, and a negative one towards her driving ability.

Also, my brother worked at Capitol Records when the album hit the streets, and I pestered him for a rumored--yet never confirmed--Brighten The Corners promotional nightlight. I swear, I don't need a nightlight anymore (not since I murdered my imaginary friend), but I was really enamored with Pavement. Failing me yet again, my brother never got me the nightlight, but he did get me a promotional chocolate bar for Spearhead's Chocolate Supa Highway album. Woo.

Anyway, Brighten The Corners has just received the deluxe, double-disc, reissue treatment courtesy of Matador. Having recently come off the commercially stifling Wowee Zowee--an experimental record released at a time when most fans just wanted Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain II--Brighten The Corners featured a more streamlined Pavement (see simpler, catchy numbers like "Stereo" and "Embassy Row" for proof of that), but ultimately failed to live up the mammoth expectations the band had been saddling since the early excitement of Slanted and Enchanted.

As far as the bonus disc goes, as expected, it's loaded with gems (24 tracks!) and more than a few songs that might have been best left alone; although the title "Neil Hagerty Meets Jon Spencer in a Non-Alcoholic Bar" is worth a chuckle (in a mid-'90s sort of way), the song isn't necessarily the best use of studio time. Better examples of the quality on the Nicene Creedence Edition bonus disc are Scott Kannberg's "Destroy Mater Dei," a sloppy little number with the enduring line "I'm Spiral Stairs and I Live in East Berkeley" (he does, or he did, since I used to know his neighbors--and here is where you'd refer to me as your "fact checking cuz"), and the band's wonderful, and meandering cover of Echo & the Bunnymen's "The Killing Moon." Throughout, frontman, Portlander, and fantasy sports enthusiast, Stephen Malkmus demonstrates his ease for writing carefree little slack-rock jams--how songs like "Winner of The," "Nigel," and "And Then (The Hexx)" didn't make the final album cut is beyond me.

LISTEN:

Pavement - "The Killing Moon"

Pavement - "Type Slowly" (live)

CD's come in the mail (note to PR people: not enough these days... I know the economy sucks but you've got to spend money to make money... so get in touch, eh?). Most of the yellow padded envelopes that arrive are filled with garbage, but every so often something brilliant shows up that I'd never have found.

(And for the matter of digital releases, I will say I find the physical copies easier to digest--it's easier to let them play out as I go about my business, rather than trapped in the world of computer headphones. I will also say that album covers and liner notes help immensely in sorting through the torrent of music.)

Anyway, thanks to the good ol' US Postal Service I received a stunning album from Nico Muhly--one I probably never would've found otherwise.

Muhly is a classical composer and a young one. He's 27, from New York, flush with degrees and a compositional voice all his own. Muhly is modern and old, beautiful and brooding, eccentric, and--to use I word I rarely do--brilliant.

Over his short career Muhly has embarked on a number of projects but produced relatively few recordings--two albums and a part of a film soundtrack. Mothertounge, Muhly's most recent, is staggering; classical instrumentation surrounds electronic flourishes, found sounds and chirping voices. The album is comprised of three disparate compositions, each congruent, unique and split into sub-sections.

On opener "Mothertongue," a four-part piece, Muhly is entranced by voice as words and numbers are layered and fired off at light-speed by mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer. It is frightening and energetic, paraniod and spiced with moments of occasional clarity and sunshine.

"Wonders" at times recalls The Books, only led by ridiculously dense, radical compositional hand. It's second movement, "The Devil Appear'd In The Shape Of A Man" begins almost as bedroom indie rock (sung, however, with god-given talent and deft precision) before inducing mind-bending scales, horns, harpsichord and a dizzying swirl.

Finally, with banjos and Sam Amidon's vocal rasp, "The Only Tune" harkens back to the era of field recordings and dusty Americana--again, warped through Muhly's twisted prism. Pt. 2 becomes perhaps at once the most traditional and modern piece of music I've heard in some time. After melting down "The Only Tune" blooms, reaching up to the air and sunshine on a dewy spring morning (think Sufjan Stevens).

Throughout Mothertongue Muhly maintains a frightening ability to blend and shift chords. A pecking, staccato sense of foreboding schizophrenia is suddenly and slyly covered by a blanket of warm gold. And back again. Muhly warps feeling with expert ease.

Although I'm going to, please know I'm loath to share excerpts from Mothertongue as the multi-part pieces should absolutely be listened to in their entirety for full emotional impact.

Really, you should just go out, get this album, turn the lights low, lie on the floor, maybe smoke some pot, turn this fucker up LOUD, and listen intently, front to back.

"Mothertongue Pt 3 - Hress:

"The Only Tune Pt 3 - The Only Tune":

Ryan Adams has made a point of producing consistent, vibrant and refreshing (if not arguably redundant) material since his late '90s split with alt-country darlings Whiskeytown. But where his earliest solo albums illuminated a minimalist Lennon-esque honky-pop, once the Love Is Hell albums came to be released, followed by the experimental foray into straight rock 'n' roll on Rock N Roll, it seemed a necessary artistic detour to hook in with a powerful session band. Enter The Cardinals. And ever since this marriage of reckless troubadour and steady-as-she-goes backing band, Adams has seen his most ambitious and varied musical ruminations yet.
Cardinology espouses this perhaps even more than last year's Easy Tiger LP or the Follow the Lights EP (also released in '07). The album opens with the Apache shuffle jam "Born Into A Light," with a pedal steel current rippling through waves of staccato melodicism.
"Magick" bulges with an eerie Stevie Nicks cadence, backed by the most aggressive tune forged by Adams since the horrid "Halloween Head," from Easy Tiger, a song that has never once not been skipped over in my late night bedroom whiskey-sipping sessions. Luckily, the strut hits stride early and carries you through to a bouncy chorus.
A majority of Adams' perceived formula for success seems oddly absent from this collection, despite the lack of any new sort of arrangements or instrumentation. The fact becomes apparent by the time you hit "Fix It," that Adams is just evolving so much quicker as a songwriter than history tells us is natural. Take away the prolific nature of his songcraft - the fact that he's put out 11 albums since 2000 - and it becomes obvious (almost painfully), that he's, simply, a better songwriter than his peers, and their peers. And sure, there are catalogued classic rock band points to reference song-by-song. There's the melody on "Magick" that sounds like it could be Fleetwood Mac, or the intro to "Cobwebs," which invokes visions of The Who, or even any number of foci derived from early '00 NYC retro rock. He's a sponge for only the most seminal of influences, yet he delivers them in a decidedly robust and varied manner. Cardinology, while far from being his most distinct or best work yet (that title would have to go to 2005's double-album Cold Roses), is another indication of the peaking Ryan Adams looming somewhere in the foreseeable future.

I've been singing the praises--here, here, and way back in '05 right here--of Astronautalis for years now, but it's only recently that the Seattle-via-Florida emcee really hit his creative stride. His dismantled hiphop rhymes filtered through a solid mass of introspective indie rock has always been an acquired taste. It either hits you like a ton of bricks, or sails wide and comes nowhere close to making an impact. I'm in the smacked-in-the-grill-by-bricks category, a longtime fan who has abused this humble soapbox of mine to repeatedly swoon about the ways of Astronautalis.

Let's keep swooning.

Pomegranate (out today!) is the latest from Andy Bothwell (the man behind the Astronautalis moniker), and it documents time spent in his former stomping grounds of Denton, TX, where he collabroated with John Congleton (Explosions in the Sky, Modest Mouse) to further eschew his hiphop leanings and create something far more unique than just about anything else out there. I suppose the most untouchable of the Anticon crew, Why?, would be the closest comparison, but with his gravely delivery, Bothwell is closer to Tom Waits, had the junkyard troubadour been raised on a steady diet of '90s indie rock and the Def Jam catalog.

As a whole, Pomegranate is just as ambitious as his other recordings, but this time around (possibly with the direction of Congleton) Bothwell is more focused and direct than ever. Less attention is placed on navel gazing lyrics, and instead the record is assembled like a series of short tales--about everything from heartbreak and loss to opium runners--that work together to form one mighty collective work. I wish all records were this exciting.

LISTEN:

Astronautalis - "Two Years Before the Mast"

Astronautalis - "Trouble Hunters"

Photo: Jostin Darlington

Years back when Rilo Kiley came through the Meow Meow a slew of the band's fans presented them--mid-show--with a large homemade "We (Heart) Rilo Kiley" sign. Loved by most anyone with a pulse, they were the type of band you made arts & crafts for.

So what the fuck happened?

When Team-Love released Jenny Lewis' debut solo effort, Rabbit Fur Coat, in 2006, they made the record a free download (except the Traveling Wilburys cover, because the ghost of Roy Orbison will haunt your family if you download his music without paying for it). As expected, the record was a huge success, propelling Lewis to a larger position than her fellow Rilo bandmates and establishing her as a respected solo performer. Now Lewis is on the cusp of releasing solo album number two, Acid Tongue, but this time it's on Warner Bros, and there is a slight difference on how this record is being released...

First off, this is how the record arrived:

Uh-oh, looks like someone in Legal got to write the copy again. These vaguely threatening watermarked CDs are common these days, and while I understand why labels want them, they don't really function as intended (the album leaked this weekend). My watermarked copy of Acid Tongue does not play on my home stereo, nor will I even attempt to insert it into my computer. It works fine in my car stereo, which means I can listen to the album in a pair of six-minute intervals on my way to, and from, work everyday. Pray for traffic Jenny Lewis, because that is the only way I can listen to another song. This is one of the reasons why Acid Tongue won't be as successful as Rabbit Fur Coat.

The other? It's a pretty terrible album. Much like the audio trainwreck that was Under the Blacklight, the baffling 2007 release from Rilo Kiley, this album is directionless and confusing. Hell, Lewis doesn't even sound like herself until five songs deep, the title track is the first listenable moment of Acid Tongue, and the cameos (Elvis Costello, Zooey Deschanel, and the tall dude from Black Crowes) don't pull their weight. Songs like "The Next Messiah" and "Black Sand" aimlessly meander, and lack the charm and homespun charisma of her previous work. Perhaps I'm a little biased--seeing how I have to limit my listening experience to time spent behind the wheel--but all I think about when listening to this stale recording is how I miss that band who took the Meow Meow stage so many years ago.

LISTEN:
This is the part of the blog post where I'd normally post a song, but since the CD won't play on my computer, here is some audio of a kitten purring. Seriously.

"Purring Kitten"

Although the record isn't due out for another few weeks (July 15th, to be exact), over at their Myspace page The Hold Steady currently have Stay Positive, in its entirety, streaming for free!

I have quite a few lengthy things to say about the brilliance of Stay Positive, so please continue on after the jump to hear me rant about why this record may prove to be the finest in their catalog, and why The Hold Steady are easily the greatest working band in rock and roll.

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