Ian Miller, Editor

Review: “Phoenix” by Pedro The Lion

“Phoenix” successfully places the listener into the world of Pedro The Lion, memorializing a past with an urgency to be remembered.

FFO: Jeremy Enigk, Mineral, 90’s Alt. Rock

“But I remember what it was like / astride my yellow bike / first freedom, second life / all the places I could ride / Leaving early, packing light / that little ache inside / my kingdom for someone to ride with.”

I knew very little about Pedro The Lion when I first heard these lines over the weekend. My only experience with the late 90’s legend was a casual listen of 2004’s Achilles Heel, which I listened to with a good friend who loves the band. My interest was piqued enough that when I discovered that indie-rock mastermind David Bazan was releasing his first album in fifteen years under the his old moniker “Pedro The Lion” (he has released under his own name since then), I decided to give Phoenix a listen with very little context for the projects’ long life span.

Jumping in on a new album from an artist decades into their career can feel like a daunting venture, but as it turns out, the album requires little-to-no context to enjoy. I was instantly hooked on the first full song, “Yellow Bike.” Everything about it instantly felt nostalgic to me . . . the guitar chords, thudding drums, Bazan’s worn, passionate voice that somehow calls to mind the bluesy tones of Randy Newman. Through the image of his childhood bike, Bazan beautifully and simply ties his six-year-old self to his present day, forty-three-year-old self; it is an ode to freedom, and a yearning for companionship and belonging within it. The closing chorus subtly changes the last line from “my kingdom for someone to ride with,” to “I’d trade my kingdom for someone to ride with,” exemplifying masterful songwriting, showing how the simple addition of two words can powerfully change the direction and meaning of a song.

The album continues this reflective thread on later tracks, painting vivid images of childhood and connecting them firmly to the present moment. In the song “Model Homes,” Bazan turns memories of house shopping with his parents to the adult longing for change, “Tired of where we live / hoping that it’s not if, but when / when will the wait be over?” This motif is accomplished perhaps most memorably on “Circle K,” where Bazan reminisces on childhood overspending at the convenience store as if it were a prophesy, with a simplicity that denies heavy-handedness, “I spent it all at Circle K / and the good Lord smiled and looked the other way.”

Sonically, Phoenix is a pretty standard rock album, which suits the ballad-like story telling very well. On “Black Canyon,” the haunting tale of a man’s gruesome death under an eighteen-wheeler is punctuated by dissonant guitar chords as pounding toms underline the track, while the chorus jumps out like a stadium rock song. The album’s big guitars and gritty bass could be played in massive arenas or small rock clubs; it does not sound underground, but not so produced that it feels phony.

For as strong as the highlights are, there are some duller moments that don’t stick out as readily, making the album feel slightly uneven. Songs like “All Seeing Eye” towards the end of the record (while brief) drags on a bit, as does the repetition of the simplistic chorus in “My Phoenix.” They are not bad songs, but compared to the richness of the others, play out as obvious weaker-links.

The title Phoenix carries not only the mythical imagery of rebirth but also the name of the city where Bazan grew up. This feels appropriate in both senses, as it seems to signify a new era in Bazan’s career that is firmly rooted in memories of the past with time-worn songwriting that pulls the two together quite well. It successfully places the listener into the world of Pedro The Lion, memorializing a past with an urgency to be remembered.

“We could write me some reminders, I’d memorize them / I could sing them to myself and whoever’s listening / I could put them on a record about my hometown / sitting here with pen and paper, I’m listening now.” – “Quietest Friend”

Rating: 7.7 (Stand Out)

For info on how we rate albums, see our rating scale.

Release Date: Jan 18, 2019

Label: Polyvinyl Records

Review: “Heard It In A Past Life” by Maggie Rogers

The record is teaming with life and joy in terms of the richness of its lyricism and musicianship.

FFO: HAIM, boygenius, Stevie Nicks, “After Laughter-Era” Paramore.

Singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers has a modern version of a classic success story. She did not grow up in a particularly musical family, but at age seven began taking harp lessons, and as her love of music grew, she expanded her instrumental pallet to include guitar and piano. During high school, she attended a Berklee College of Music summer program and won their songwriting contest, spurring her to continue to focus in that area.

Eventually she found her way into New York University’s prestigious Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, where she recorded and self-released a folk album in the vein of early Bon Iver and Sufjan Stevens. During this time, she studied abroad in France where she started listening to house and dance music, and after experiencing an extended spell of writer’s block, began creating new music that combined her folk melodies and lyricism with the backbone of the dance genres she fell in love with in France.

Her real success came in the form of a viral video. The legendary Pharrell Williams, an in-house musician at N.Y.U. at the time, visited a music production class that Rogers was enrolled in to critique the students’ work. In the video, a visibly moved Pharrell tells Rogers that her song “Alaska” is basically perfect, saying “I’ve never heard anyone like you before.” Coming from one of the most influential pop/hip-hop producers of the past two decades, this was about the best endorsement she could get, which launched a massive major label bidding war. Now, nearly two years later, her debut full-length has arrived via Capitol Records.

This context is necessary because it takes up a fair amount of the subject matter of the album. In many ways, Heard It In A Past Life is the story of an introvert suddenly thrust into the spotlight. One of the album’s lead singles, the folk-pop “Light On,” deals with this head-on in the first verse, “Oh I couldn’t stop it, tried to slow it all down / crying in the bathroom, had to figure it out / with everyone around me saying, ‘you must be so happy now.’” It’s not angry or whiny, but a genuine expression of confusing emotions; her story is one that many dream of and strive for, but is terrifying when actually experienced.

But the record does not wallow too long in this specific space; It is teaming with life and joy in terms of the richness of its lyricism and musicianship. The Pharrell-approved “Alaska,” exemplifies the instrumental Rogers’ instrumental depth. The beat is intricate and layered, with subtle syncopated synths adding a bass-layer of melody as Rogers’ voice floats overtop, “I was walking through icy streams that took my breath away / moving slowly through westward water / over glacial plains.” The imagery shows her deep-connection with the natural world, which makes her stand out in the context of most pop musicians. Elsewhere, she uses samples from nature that she collected on hikes; “Overnight,” sounds like it samples a bird call as a percussion instrument. It’s fresh and creative while still being accessible to pretty much everyone.

Despite the danceable beats and sugary hooks, Rogers remains first and foremost a songwriter throughout the album, with her lyrics as a central focus on the record. Back-half highlight “Retrograde” features one of the album’s most passionate vocal performances, in which she belts the chorus, “Oh here I am, settled in on your floor / quieting all the world outside your door / and I am reckoning.” It is authentic, passionate lyricism rarely found in much of today’s pop music.

Ever since Lorde’s debut Pure Heroine in 2014, much of the pop landscape has been defined by cool detachment and cynicism, or simply over sexualization of the star. Maggie Rogers requires neither of those things to be successful. The way in which she throws herself into her music with such genuine love and passion is refreshing because it relies not on cultivating a pop image, but just in being her and sharing music that she is passionate about creating. Rogers is clearly making music that she loves, and it is a joy to be able to breath it in with her.

What holds the album back from being great is the major label-ness of it. This is not to say that top-tear production is bad; I myself am a big fan of pop music, and high-end production is not a strike in my book. But, there are moments when the album lacks a certain edge, when the crispness of the drums and guitars are a bit too crisp, and it feels a bit wrong. It’s not inauthentic, but it holds some moments back from being as cutting as they could be.

That said, the record remains a breath of fresh air for fans of pop and folk alike. It is one of the only folk-pop records that I have genuinely enjoyed, because it’s not soft and dumbed down, but is a creative testament to what can happen when an artist takes genuine inspiration from the two seemingly opposed genres. More than anything, it establishes Maggie Rogers as an artist to follow in the coming decade.

Rating: 7.8 (Stand Out)

For info on how we score albums see our rating scale.

Release Date: Jan 18, 2019

Label: Capitol Records

Review: “Tallies” (Self-Titled)

Toronto band Tallies debut self-titled record manages to create a captivating blend of jangly shoegaze and indie pop.
FFO: The Innocence Mission, Slowdive

With the 2020’s fast approaching, 1990’s nostalgia is more common than ever. Today’s youth (and some younger adults) were born after 2000. To them, 90’s seems as distant as the 80’s did to those of us who were born in the 90’s. With the inevitable romanticizing of the era, many music acts have cropped up looking to capitalize on this, some doing it successfully, others not so much. Toronto band Tallies debut self-titled record manages to do the former, successfully creating a captivating blend of jangly shoegaze and indie pop. It is a sound that would not be out of place on college radio in 1992, but still manages to escape falling into the throwback category by capitalizing on their youthful energy.

A big contributor to this is the voice and energy of frontwoman, Sarah Cogan. Although her voice is set in a different context, it brings to mind the vocal style of dream-pop band The Innocence Mission, Karen Peris. Her voice has a child-like, almost otherworldly quality that brings a dreamy quality to the record. Instrumentally, this record could be compared to many shoegaze bands of the golden-era. In particular, some of the bass lines are reminiscent of Slowdive, and while the instrumentation is not necessarily as dense, it has plenty of pop to it to keep the listener interested the whole time.

I found the back-half of the record to be particularly strong. The song “Beat The Heart” on the second half has one of my favorite hooks, as Cogan sings over a driving beat, “Oh we’re ticking down, ticking down the days / It’s longer than missing, longer than hoping / beat the heart, beat it, we’re beating.” The vague, almost impressionistic quality of the lyrics fits well with ambient soundscape. Elsewhere on the track, Corgan evokes an almost cosmic quality, “the voice that makes us move / glides amongst our melting shoes / we’re illuminated / spaced out, feel the difference / Earth set from the moon / we’re floating.” It places the listener in the stratosphere in a sort of ecstasy in a masterful way that the genre is known for achieving.

This record establishes Tallies as a band to watch out for in the coming years, especially as the soundscape of rock music begins to shift again in the coming decade. It’s an impressive debut in terms of its consistency and lack of filler, as well as pop sensibility. It’s possible that they may be seen as a leader if this sound catches on and begins to take fire (even more than it already has) in the indie scene.

Score: 7.1 (Stand Out)

For info on how we score albums see https://notasound.org/2018/11/01/our-rating-scale/

Label: Kanine Records

Release Date: 1/11/2019

Review: “Tomb” by Angelo De Augustine

Tomb leaves the listener feeling refreshed in the way one feels after a good, healthy cry.

When someone experiences a significant breakup or loss of a romantic partner, there is usually a rush of conflicting feelings. Sometimes they manifest in betrayal and anger. Sometimes there is only shock and an inability to process the event. But more often than not, the most overwhelming feeling is one of deep mourning over the fact that something that was once good and beautiful is now gone. The mind spins trying to make sense of everything; relishing memories, attempting to sort out how we got from there to here. On the title track and album opener of Angelo De Augustine’s excellent Tomb, he captures this initial feeling perfectly, at once evoking remembrances of a beautiful relationship, wondering how it is now gone, “I walked into your life at the wrong time / never quite been perceptive of real life / it was not your fault or a fault of mine / but it’s hard to let you go this time.” It is more than mourning; it is a search for justification, a deep and resounding “why?”

Part of what makes these lyrics so powerful is the instrumentation. In a soft falsetto comparable to Sufjan Stevens (his label-mate and owner), Augustine’s double-tracked vocals hover over soft guitar plucking, with subtle piano underlying the second half of the track. The result is melancholy, melodic, and incredibly captivating. However, this is not your run-of-the-mill indie-folk record. The following track “All to the Wind” calls to mind a McCartney-penned Beatles track, with snappy piano-pop chords and subtle guitar parts providing more layers. “I Could Be Wrong,” sounds like something from the Postal Service or Sufjan’s Age of Adz, with a simplistic electronic beat and minimalistic synth textures. This album is no sleeper; at no point does the instrumentation feel mundane.

What makes this album stand out is the way it intersects beauty and pain. The record was written in 2017 in five days – December 20^th-25^th. The feeling that it evokes is similar to what many feel around the holidays. For a lot of folks it is a time of reflection and reckoning with one’s place in life within the context of somber beauty. The chorus of a stand-out track, “You Needed Love, I Needed You,” captures this reflective mood, “Life’s been hard and you’ve lived a few / did I give too much love to you? / I’m sorry but it’s what I had to do / you needed love and I needed you.” It’s heartbreaking in that it recognizes the situation, but does not desecrate the beauty that once existed in the relationship.

This song also exemplifies effective songwriting in its use of images that are specific enough to give the listener a clear picture, but also general enough that most people can relate to them without being generic. “Back in my hometown looking for a silver Honda / but there’s too many all around / and I fear I’ll never find you / so I walk around.” Everyone in the civilized world knows what a silver Honda looks like, yet it’s a specific enough image that it feels real, allowing the listener to attach their own associations to it and cry right along with Angelo.

While much of this album deals with heartbreak, it also goes beyond it. That is to say, the breakup is not isolated; it is contextualized in the songwriter’s world. Hushed acoustic track “Kaitlin” invokes memories of family, “Mother left you in the night / my father faded into the same light / now we’re both hoping to find someone.” The record has wide vision and it immerses the listener deeply into its world.

Tomb leaves you feeling refreshed in the way one feels after a good, healthy cry. It’s not panicky or hopeless, but an honest attempt to reckon with loss that is just as normal and human as it is to weep for things worth weeping over. It is appropriately named, as it is a monument to something that was at one time good and beautiful that deserves to be remembered in the minds of the artist and listener alike.

Score: 8.8 (Best New Music)

For info on how we score album see https://notasound.org/2018/11/01/our-rating-scale/

https://open.spotify.com/album/0H3WQSbJ7SgZtB35BEOP9P?si=auKmFP7DR1yNcQzOAZMP5w