Hypnotic Textures from Teletextile

Brooklyn band Teletextile’s latest ep, Reflector, makes a good segue with Damian Quinones (just reviewed here), although it draws on completely different influences, in this case late 80s dreampop and 90s trip-hop. Frontwoman/keyboardist/harpist Pamela Martinez writes simple, memorable hooks that slowly build into big anthems, backed by Caitlin Gray on bass and guitars, Luke Schnieders on drums and a posse of special guests. As a singer, Martinez is just as interesting when she’s quiet and pensive as when she belts – and she saves the volume for when she really needs it. The album’s first song, I Don’t Know How to Act Here sets the stage for everything that follows it, a dreamy intro morphing into quirky trip-hop with disquieting, bell-like keyboards and a big anthemic guitar crescendo. “Endless, endless, endless,” is the uneasy closing mantra.

What If I sets atmospheric vocals over tricky insectile percussion with layers of keys and guitars that come in waves, slowly up, and then suddenly back down: the song winds out with a wary vocal line over hypnotic ooh-ahs. John, a big rock ballad in disguise, slowly brings in big ringing reverb guitar chords and a long dreampop/shoegaze interlude before going out as quietly as it came in. The last song, What if You, a companion piece to What If I, is the loudest track here, lush and majestic like the Church or the Cure, right down to the bass playing the lead line, whether with a fuzztone or with a watery chorus-box effect. It’s good headphone music; like Quinones, it’s proof that accessible rock doesn’t necessarily have to be stupid.

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Album of the Day 9/7/10

Every day our 1000 best albums of all time countdown continues all the way to #1. Tuesday’s album is #875:

The Cure – Seventeen Seconds

The popular favorite, and deservedly so, is the quirkily charming Boys Don’t Cry; the goth crowd tends to gravitate toward Pornography, another splendid if completely different album. This is the missing link between the two. The cold gloom of its atmospherics foreshadowed the goth direction they’d take for the next few years, but there’s also a catchy pop sensibility that never falls over the edge into the cloying sound that would define the band’s other side, starting in 1986 with Head on the Door. This is their second album, from 1980, bassist Simon Gallup locking with drummer Lol Tolhurst for a tightly wound, propulsive beat (calling it a groove would be an overstatement) beneath Robert Smith’s icy jangle and affectless vocals. The title refers to how long the brain can maintain consciousness after the heart stops beating. A pensive, cinematic instrumental miniature sets the tone for each of the album sides; side one has the big hit Play for Today and a bit later on, the moody, furtive In Your House. Side two has the brooding, somewhat epic A Forest and At Night as well as M, arguably their best song, seemingly a reference to the serial killer role played so unforgettably by Peter Lorre in the Fritz Lang film. Here’s a random torrent.

Song of the Day 7/2/09

Every day, our top 666 songs of alltime countdown gets one step closer to #1. Thursday’s song is #391:

The Cure – M

Spookiest thing they ever did, and it’s the sheer nonchalance that makes it that way. “Ready, for the next attack,” Robert Smith says, evoking Peter Lorre’s character in the unforgettable Fritz Lang film. Swooping, ominous organ, gunshot drum machine and killer Laurence Tolhurst bassline with all those chords. From the band’s best album, Seventeen Seconds, 1983; mp3s are everywhere. The link above is an intriguing live clip from Mexico City, 2005.

CD Review: Ninth House – Realize and It’s Gone

The fourth and possibly final cd from this long-running New York “cemetery and western” unit. This isn’t a country album by any means: it’s a dark, desperate, angry rock record. Aside from some of the songwriting (frontman/bassist Mark Sinnis continues in this promising direction in his solo work), the only concession to Nashville is that the vocals are mixed noticeably louder than the instrumentation, in the style of country records from the 1930s and 40s. Ninth House bridge the gap between Joy Division and Johnny Cash. The production values are strictly punk/new wave: layers of distorted and watery electric guitars, ominous string synthesizer and organ, and melodic bass, usually set to a fast 2/4 beat. The cd opens with a roar, on the magnificently ferocious chorus of the single Long Stray Whim (a deliriously good live take of this song was previously issued on the band’s sadly out-of-print Aerosol album). It’s a transcendentally powerful escape anthem:

This morning I stopped
It’s boring, I strayed
I’m on a long stray whim
It started
For a moment I fought it
I couldn’t persuade me
I’m on a long stray whim

In a dark, passionate baritone, Sinnis – one of the greatest male singers in all of rock – builds his case for getting away from it all. It’s ELO’s Eldorado for a new generation. The band follows this with the wickedly anthemic Burn, about a cremation. Ninth House frequently get pegged as a goth band, and while they’re much more diverse, this song makes it easy to see how they got that label. The next two tracks, Stretch Marks and Quiet Change could easily have fit onto a mid-80s Cure album like Head on the Door, although they crunch rather than jangle. After that, the slow What Are You Waiting For builds to a soaring crescendo of vocals and guitars.

The following cut Mistaken for Love is one of two straight-up country songs on the album, although the band – particularly guitarist Bernard San Juan, who has since left – gives it a rock treatment. It’s a savage look back at a failed marriage: Sinnis’ cold ending will send chills down your spine. Similarly, the next track Skeletons has country swing but an 80s rock sound. The tempo picks up even more on the relentless, minor-key Out of Reach, a concert favorite. Then it’s back to Nashville gothic with When the Sun Bows to the Moon, a gorgeous, catchy country anthem, a broadside fired at point-blank range at somebody who can’t get over herself:

You live in your own atmosphere
You create your own demise
Breathe your own tainted air

It’s taken on a particularly poignant significance in the wake of 9/11. The next song Cause You Want To is a slow, crescendoing, death-obsessed number that belies its catchy, major-key melody. The album closes with a blistering rock version of perhaps the original Nashville gothic song, Ghost Riders in the Sky and then the epic title track, which builds from a catchy, thorny major-key first section into a hypnotically dark, crashing, descending progression. And then it’s over.

Sinnis’ lyrics are terse and crystallized, the band is tight and the overall intensity of the album never lets up. This is serious stuff, a good album to blast at top volume after a rough day at work or school. Definitely one of the best half-dozen albums of the year to date, as consistently good as Ninth House’s two previous studio records. Five shots of bourbon, no chaser. Albums are available online, in better independent record stores and at shows. Ninth House plays the cd release show on July 7 at Galapagos at midnight.