Times Change, Things Stay The Same

The Guilty Office
The Bats
Mistletone, 2009
4 stars

For a band to stay (for the most part) together for a quarter of a century is no mean feat, but for a band to do so and not try and re-invent themselves or move with the times is something else. The Bats, perhaps the best thing to come out of the ashes of seminal NZ post-punk band The Clean, have carved out such a career to date, and show no signs or stopping with The Guilty Office. The rustic, jangly pop songs on The Guilty Office are reminiscent of the band’s finest work on Daddy’s Highway and The Law of Things. String creepers climb up a web of steady, spritely guitar lines and restrained percussion, with Robert Scott’s simple, steady vocals bringing the whole thing to bloom. The songs are catchy – none moreso than Two Lines and the uptempo Steppin’ Out – but effortlessly catchy – these guys really know what they’re doing, and are doing it better than any of their current imitators. The album’s melancholy title track is probably the most striking cut, with a continual chorus of muted guitar lines forming a kind of gently-lapping pool for Scott’s words to bob around in. All up, the album is classic Bats, and a perfect entry point for the as-yet uninitiated. Instead of trying to keep up with modern musical trends (ahem, U2), The Bats have stuck to their guns and found the same trends coming full circle, trying to catch up with them.

Published in mX, Thursday July 30, 2009.

Enough Wondering

I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day
Julie Doiron
Label, 2008
4 stars

I’m a newcomer to the musical stylings of Ms Julie Doiron, but from my limited exposure - her excellent recent collaboration with Mount Eerie and this record - I like what I hear. Perhaps it’s the awkwardly-spelled surname, but I don’t understand why an artist like Doiron, with a decade-and-a-bit’s worth of solo material, isn’t more widely known – especially when she’s capable of producing gems like the ones found on I Can Wonder. This record has bits of everything; cute acoustic sing-alongs (Nice To Come Home), fuzzy dirge-rockers (Heavy Snow and Consolation Prize) and melancholy pop classics (Lovers of the World is on heavy rotation on my stereo at home); all strung together like a row of hand-made, mis-matched paper lanterns. Reverb-soaked lullaby Blue, the album’s blissed-out highlight, stays in your head well after the final watery guitar note fades out and, in my opinion, would have made for a far more satisfying closing track than the cute Glad To Be Alive. Still, the overall package is a bright, intimate and smart album that showcases one of Canada’s unsung musical champions.

Artwork: A
As un-fussed and, for that reason, beautiful as the album itself. Spot-on.

Published in mX,Thursday July 23, 2009.

Home-grown

Farm
Dinosaur Jr
Jagjaguwar, 2009
4 stars

You’d be a fool to expect any major sonic sidesteps from a band this far into their career; thankfully - and respectfully - Dinosaur Jr are not Radiohead or The Beatles. That said, Farm sees the slacker-rock stalwarts doing what they do best and doing it as well as they ever have – melodic, sometimes-melancholic rock, heavy on the fuzz and light on ornamentation (aside from the occasional guitar flourish). The only major surprise is that it’s this good. And long too - with a playing time somewhere around the hour mark it’s like a meditation on late-‘80s garage noise-rock; you might need to kick yourself to remind yourself that you are in fact sitting in an office cubicle or on a city-bound tram, and not on a shitty old couch in a childhood mate’s suburban garage. There are numerous highlights, but none better than the epic I Don’t Wanna Go There, with lead drawler J Mascis doing his best Eddie Vedder impersonation over some fantastic, noisy power-chords and a couple of (for want of a better word) ‘scorching’ guitar solos; it all sounds bloody amazing. Musically, J, Lou and Murph are ageing well – they sound more focused and content than ever. And they should be. Why re-invent the wheel if you’re happy where you’re sitting.

Artwork: C+
This kind of illustration doesn't do much for me personally, but that aside, the text layout of this thing is what really gets me. It just looks a bit rushed; a bit under-cooked.

Published in mX, Thursday July 2, 2009.