Land of Kush - 'Against the Day'

The book is (almost) always better. The “Harry Potter” series, The Natural, The Passion of The Christ… these are examples of that saying. Sure, there are exceptions (The Godfather, despite reducing the female characters significantly, is still superior as a film), but for the most part, transferring a book to another medium is a bad idea. Pacing, spacing, and flavor are all lost, either to create a work that hits all the plot points without any soul or one that attempts to capture the spirit without all those pesky facts. Either way, most adaptations become dependent on their source material. Which is why, at least in the case of the Land of Kush’s Against the Day, it helps to adapt something that’s loose, roaming, and experimental.

Those adjectives could also describe the record itself. The Thomas Pynchon book of the same name is over 1,000 pages long, spans decades and continents, and yet for all its length has the simplest semblance of a narrative. Land of Kush’s record only spans an hour, but it leaps from coherence to ambiance and back almost on a whim. Intended as homage to Pynchon for “permanently fucking my mind” by composer Sam Shalabi, Land of Kush dabbles in orchestral psychedelic pseudo-jazz. With almost 30 musicians employed to recreate Shalabi’s vision of Pynchon’s vision, Against the Day has quite a few instruments at its disposal. How well it succeeds for listeners depends on two factors.

First, this isn’t a “books on tape” translation. Shalabi’s attempts to honor Pynchon’s writing are, oddly enough, mostly nonverbal. Though the record does include lyrics in certain movements, like on sections of “Iceland Spar” and “Bilocations,” Against the Day isn’t a literal adaptation, and could be thought of more as an artistic response to the book. The music conveys certain emotions Shalabi felt while reading.

And, wonder of wonders, it sounds like he spent a lot of time being bored out of his skull. Against the Day drones a lot. And not like shoegaze or stoner metal; Kush makes those concepts sound like tangible pop trifles by comparison. “The Light Over the Ranges,” the opening piece, is almost all buzzing and moodiness. It feels like it’s building towards something, but seven-and-a-half minutes long, it sure takes a while to create anything coherent, or least segue into something that is, namely track two, “Iceland Spar.”

Cue vox and Middle Eastern touches for a few minutes, and then Shalabi and his band return to formlessness by the end of track three, the 21-minute “Bilocations.” But, again, it leads to something. The title track is righteous and furious and rocking. This is the rising action which the record has been leading towards, and with searing guitar segueing into droning synths, it’s a worthwhile wait. “Rue du Départ” wraps it up, though it takes eight-and-a-half minutes to do so.

Against the Day (the book) requires patience. So does Against the Day (the album). But the payoff, track four of five, justifies the slow, maddening introduction. How much it honors the book largely falls into the slippery bullshit slope of symbolism, and perhaps, to a certain extent, it’s better to think of the two as separate but equal.

regarding Bruce Springsteen covering Joe Strummer.

As previously blogged, Bruce Springsteen made his first Glastonbury Festival appearance this year. He opted to open with a cover of Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros' "Coma Girl." It's the first Mescaleros song I truly fell in love with, prompting me to explore Joe's post-Clash catalogue. I'm still doing that - I need to find a copy of the "Coma Girl" picture disc b/w a cover of Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop" STAT. For the time being, though, I'm going to enjoy this little gift from Springsteen, another songwriter and rocker who's shaped my life time and again. The recording consists of just Bruce on acoustic guitar and harmonica with accompaniment by saxophonist Clarence "Big Man" Clemons. The pair strips away the song's bravado a bit, but it's a solid interpretation, although I wish the harmonica came into play sooner. Still, though, it's Springsteen, one of the best rock and/or roll performers, playing one of the best songs by Strummer, one of the best punkers of all time.

I think I'm going to put on Global A Go-Go and enjoy some "ragga, bhangra, two-step tanga, mini-cab radio, music on the go" mixed with "Brit-pop, hip-hop, Lindy hop, Gaelic Heavy Metal fans, fighting in the road."

Also, seriously, did you click this link yet? Get into it!

OpeNightmare - 'The Harder They Come'

If there’s one thing the French are good at, it’s bein’ ornery. Oh, and losing wars. But mostly just being ornery. French punks OpeNightmare, albeit fronted by Belgian Yves Vai, fit that description mighty well. The band’s third full-length, The Harder They Come, while at times tedious, serves up riotous punk rock.

OpeNightmare is a play on the name of the atom bomb’s “father,” J. Robert Oppenheimer, and not a lazy spelling for Open Nightmare. This makes the pronunciation sound slightly exotic despite being inspired by a guy who lived and died in New Jersey. That’s where the exoticism ends, though, unless you count the liner notes’ info about helping out with education and art in France… and the cute way Yves says pronounces “fuck” as “fahk.” Yves sings in English, so us ’Mericans should have no trouble getting behind humanitarian tunes like “No Fun Atom” and “You Don’t Know.”

This is standard punk – think Anti-Flag, Tiger Army, and maybe Rancid (2000), only more homogeneous. At 40 minutes, The Harder They Come could stand to shed a few of its 13 tracks. Punk songs about being super wicked punk tend to suck, and “Rock’n’Roll Sucks,” a pro-punk/metal tune, is no exception. “No Buck No Fuck,” in which the narrator tries to kill a woman on the street after killing his wife, could probably go too. Depending on your perspective, it’s either a depiction of humans’ darker elements, like a weaker “Johnny Hit and Run Paulene,” or a lame Misfits retread. So, it’s either offensively terrible or terribly offensive. While “Sleeping With My Boss” examines the complex dynamics behind prostitution, “No Buck” comes off like a stereotypical horror show. It’s not inherently bad, but it’s still not on par with the rest of the record.

I have no idea if “Dragster Hollow Cost” is supposed to sound like a punk Rob Zombie or not.

Despite a few bum tracks, The Harder They Come has a decent percentage of solid songs. The first four tracks provide a strong 12 minutes or so of pogo-worthy punk. Skip the middle, and the record’s back-half comes off strong as well. “Dragster Hollow Cost” and “Burn / Destroy” add a little metal to the mix. All in all, not bad, not great.

The Rentals - 'It's Time to Come Home'

July, the middle point of the year, calls for reflection. My dad traditionally declares the summer’s end after every Independence Day celebration. Fall is closer. And then winter. And then the end of the year, beginning another annual cycle, another slow death march to the grave, alone and forgotten. Plus, my Best Album of 2009 list is beginning to take form.

It’s July’s wistfulness in spite of its summery placement that makes it an appropriate month for the Rentals to release It’s Time to Come Home, chapter two in their Songs About Time project. This EP is all about regret (“Late Night Confessions”), nostalgia (“It’s Time to Come Home”), and longing (“Girls of the Metro”). Liner notes split into English and Spanish explain the songs’ histories. Like the band’s seminal release Seven More Minutes, both It’s Time to Come Home and its predecessor, Story of a Thousand Seasons, were conceived in Spain. That’s where the connections end, though.

Just as Seasons sounded mellower compared to 2007’s The Last Little Life EP, Home sounds even more subdued, weirdly recalling the barely there sound of frontman Matt Sharp’s solo material. While still a worthy purchase, it’s the slightest, perhaps least essential Rentals material to date.

The title track opens the album with bits of synth and steady drums before Lauren Chipman’s viola and heavy breathing lend the song some gravitas. “No Desire #2” follows in a similar electronic-heavy style, with slightly more propulsive percussion. “Girls of the Metro,” featuring Ozma vocalist/guitarist Ryan Slegr, is just as dreamy. Jamie Blake takes over on vocals for “Late Night Confessions,” a country-tinged lamentation. As sparse as the first three songs sound, the emergence of an acoustic guitar is actually startling. It also ends an already downplayed release on a depressing note.

It’s Time to Come Home is slight and bare, an EP that passes by rather quickly. The first three tracks blur together after a while. And while it’s not exactly a standout summer record, it is well-suited for a contemplative July.

Envy/Jesu - split

Summer’s halfway over, and I still haven’t made a beach trip yet. Haven’t burnt my feet on sand or dodged New Jersey’s tag policy or rocked my beach records. The Mescaleros, Band of Horses, and Minus the Bear always put me in a sunny mood, and that reissue of Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue was a welcome addition last year. Another album I always spin, preferably at night with the waves crashing in the distance and maybe some percussive rain, is My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless. The penultimate shoegaze record, it’s a beautiful hazy mess. A thundering behemoth. The dreamiest, the swirliest, the gosh dang bestest. And while I’ve found other bands that kinda, sorta, almost approximate that sound (M83, Mogwai, Sigur Rós), or rather certain angles of it, nothing has ever quite hit me the same way. And while sometimes that makes me sad, it’s still great to hear MBV’s ideas live on, however directly or indirectly. Which is why I don’t mind the year it took for Envy and Jesu’s split EP to drop in the states.

Jesu and Envy are two top-notch post-rock/post-hardcore/post-MBV bands that blend passion and atmosphere quite well. Envy goes first on the split with three tracks. If these songs recall Envy’s work with Thursday last year, well, that might be because they were recorded around the same time in 2008. There’s a more profound rising/falling arc here than on the Thursday split, and the material, when taken as a whole, feels better conceived. And also like that other EP, Envy comes out sounding like the better band. “Conclusion of Existence” opens the album with a subdued, droning electronic beat and ethereal guitars. It’s so hypnotic and calming that when “A Winter Quest for Fantasy” repeats the same trick before exploding during its final 90 seconds, it’s revelatory. Here is a band with a grasp of both chaos and order, violence and passivity. After this superb rising action, “Life Caught in the Rain” brings the listener back down. Where Loveless blew out of the gate with “Only Shallow” before creating a mood that stretched across the album, Envy shows moderation upfront, with a dynamic second act. However, all three tracks need to be considered together; the sequencing is crucial.

Jesu fills out the record’s backend with two lengthy ambient dance jams. Loveless was a lot of things; one them being a prediction of the U.K.’s love of jungle and techno. “Hard to Reach” winks at “Soon,” blending in cloudy, swirling instrumentation over a mid-tempo dance beat. At almost 14 minutes long, it’s somewhat of a patience-tester. But then, if you’re going to hate Jesu for droning too much, you probably shouldn’t have put ‘em on in the first place. “The Stars That Hang Above You” is more manageable at about half the running time, and just as solid. The tracks lack the flow of Envy’s material, though. Not that it’s a knock or anything. It’s just that Jesu’s songs work more individually, especially since “Hard to Reach” cycles through a number of ideas before its conclusion.

I know it’s been a year since these songs were written and recorded and what-not, but I can’t help but wonder where Envy and Jesu will go from here. Envy’s half of this split is arguably the best I’ve heard from them so far. Jesu’s got a full-length and an EP nearing completion for 2009. Until then, at least I’ve got five more nighttime ocean jams.

Big D and The Kids Table - 'Fluent in Stroll'

Big D and The Kids Table have always challenged themselves within their ska tunes, bouncing from ska-punk to two-tone to techno to hip-hop to the Salem witch trials over the years. With new full-length Fluent in Stroll, the Boston band takes on two new skancepts, with the first being LOVE. Ska songs about romance are perfect for summer, and Fluent in Stroll delivers another in a series of strong albums from the D. It’s also the first D record that isn’t a tribute to a style, but rather a new innovation called “stroll,” a mix of double-dutch, ska, reggae, and soul. The band’s punk elements are pretty much gone – most noticeably on tracks like “Stop, Look & Listen (Shake Life Up)” and “Known to Be Blue” – and this new sunny, fun genre complements the love songs better.

The fellas receive further help with their odes to the opposite sex from backing vocal group The Doped Up Dollies. The quartet announces their presence right away on track one, “Doped Up Dollies on a One Way Ticket to Blood.” They get fun times rolling with Internet references and schoolyard rhymes. Frontman David McWane carves out a little vocal niche for himself, describing his special lady friend as “See my mujer impressionante is known to dance / with sleeping feline eyes / ‘Cause she’s a long cat / a sly cat / Not someone going your way / She’s quite a little ninja / My tough little ninja.” Later in the song, McWane and his chick escape on an elephant after busting a crime, which explains the ninja bit. Also, yeah, this song is awesome. The Dollies are a welcome addition to the group, enhancing the D’s songs without cluttering them up. From the dubious boozing advice of “A Kiss A Week” to the posi-love jam “We Can Live Anywhere!” to the raucous lecturing of the title track, the Dollies provide a highlight in a record already full of ‘em. I hope the lasses tour with the band and, if so, serve up their own interpretations to the band’s older material.

Not that the record live and dies on the Dollies’ breath. “Describing the Sky” recycles the horn section from “Shining On,” but it’s a good part, so the song gets a passing grade. Big D deserves an A+, however, for track three, “Not Fucking Around.” Hit with a series of ridiculous hypothetical questions meant to test his fidelity, McWane fires back with brilliant responses. My favorite Q and A is the first verse: “If I found myself stranded on an island with six million girls / Well I’d put them all to work / We’d build a kickass sailboat / To get me back to you / See I’m not fucking around.” The song also recalls “Shining On,” if only because two years later, McWane is finally ready to say, “I’m damn well smart / And I know what I got / And I won’t be fucking around.” “Where Did All the Women Go?” is another statement of fidelity, with McWane going from being awash in wrong girls to seeing his one ‘n’ only. It’s another in a series of airy, cool jams.

Big D has always been good at closing out their records, and like “Moment Without an End” and “She Knows Her Way” before it, “We Can Live Anywhere!” is a damn fine hummable finale. A welcome upswing after the lumbering, slightly disappointing “My Thoughts Take Me Away,” the song condenses Away We Go’s optimism and romance into three minutes, 41 seconds, and without all those uncomfortable scenes about miscarriages and vaginal flavor. A haunting saxophone jazz solo segues into a rolling drum beat, chiming voices, and McWane’s assurance that “We can live anywhere / Pack you’re your things up c’mon let’s go / Didn’t you know we own this world? / Yeah we can live anywhere.” Plenty of political artists from the Bush era have struggled to find something to say in the Obama age, but Big D and The Kids Table successfully bring hope ‘n’ change on this track.

To a certain extent, Fluent in Stroll shouldn’t shake up listeners quite as much as Strictly Rude. The band’s break from punk is complete, bringing them closer to The English Beat than Less Than Jake. And while there isn’t a single “Checklist” or “L.A.X.” to rock the mix, Fluent in Stroll is a cohesive record. The title has a double-meaning – this is a band comfortable with its style and its meaning, not to mention enough sense to avoid power ballads.

D. Rider - 'Mother of Curses'

Hey sludge fans and indie kids; here’s your meeting point: D. Rider’s Mother of Curses. Short for Deathrider and not, sadly, a Dungeons & Dragons reference, the trio of Andrea Faught, Noah Tabakin, and Todd Albert Rittman specialize in cacophonous slow jams. Existing somewhere among Cursive’s wounded whine, Teenage Jesus & The Jerks’ post-punk horn bleats, and any dirge-y band ever, D. Rider makes experimental noisy noise that somehow doubles as dance music.

The band’s most defining elements come from vocalist/guitarist/drummer Rittman, who drops some great, loose, sloppy beats, especially during the album’s first three tracks. And while Faught and Tabakin provide an enticing layer of keyboards ‘n’ horns to enshroud the songs in an appealing murkiness, Rittman’s surprisingly clear vocal takes that are what give the noise more meaning through contrast. Rittman’s third contribution, the guitar, feels album erroneous by comparison. His playing is either periphery or extremely noodley, though he does on occasion find a sweet, grungy spot on tracks like “Dew Claw Don’t Claw” and “Misery Whip.”

Mother of Curses is expansive and freeform, but it does occasionally slip into formlessness. “Body to Body (to Body)” starts out great, with ringing bells and howling horns, but it dissolves painfully by its end. The song is meant to fall apart, and it takes just a little too long to get there. “Welcome Out,” meanwhile doesn’t go anywhere at all.

Soggy middle aside, though, the record works well. Faught and Tabakin are the stellar back-up players, providing noise rock without the masturbatory shapelessness. It’s almost disappointing to hear D. Rider pursue more traditional, guitar-centric rock near the end. But then, “Misery Whip” pummels so hard and so well, that it doesn’t matter. Plus, after the long, droning white noise of “The Marksman,” it’s a welcome retread.

But that’s why Mother of Curses should be appealing to a decent cross section of underground music fans. While it’s got a slight “jack of all trades/master of none” bent to it, the album manages to embody a great swath of loud ideas, making it a good gateway record in a bunch of different directions.