Victoria Underground - Handsome Distraction - Neighbours and Immigrants

Tonight begins my first in a series of (hopefully) many reviews of unsigned, independent local releases. For this installment we have on offer Victoria band Handsome Distraction and their 2010 EP Neighbours and Immigrants.

The band's name may appear to infer a certain cocky swagger, but make no mistake: Handsome Distraction are as down to earth and humble as rock musicians get. Frontman Devin Perfect has been a tireless contributor to the Victoria rock scene, both with HD and previous efforts such as Last Transmission (now Introverter), and even now in the hectic weeks following the birth of his daughter Freya, is planning HD's return to a busy schedule of constant gigging.

I first saw HD when they played with my band, Year of the Rat, back in February at the Fort Cafe. I was taken with the friendliness and approachability of the band, and further impressed with the energy emitted in their live show. It's clear that Mr. Perfect and co. have a deep passion for live music, and this really shines through in their performances.

Neighbours and Immigrants was recorded in the basement of Devin's home, fully produced and mixed by the man himself, and while it is apparent that it is a home-produced record, there are a number of production qualities that are quite impressive for a demo EP of this type. The vocals are clear and balanced, sitting nicely on top of instrumentals that are very tight and well-focused. Guitar tones are crisp and appropriate--you won't find any of the buzzy, indistinct or poorly-miced guitar tones of other home-produced records. The bass is warm, and while it could stand out a bit more in a few places, is for the most part well-mixed.

Only the drums seem to suffer from a bit of occlusion, but even then there are times when they really shine, seeming to suit the nature of the songs quite well in their background texture. Whatever the case, it's evident that drummer Bryan Reiber is a competent beat-keeper, with many of his patterns seemingly influenced by classic drummers like Dave Grohl and Chad Smith. He even kind of looks like Dave Grohl, which is never a bad thing for a drummer.

There are demonstrations of the band's songwriting up to this point on Neighbours, and hints at where they will progress to in the future. Tracks such as the one "Matter of Time" showcase a forward-thinking approach to songwriting, with interesting guitar textures and non-traditional song structuring.

This is a demo record, and so of course there are indications of a band struggling to find their identity; at times, HD's textural guitar licks feel flat and unimaginative, and their lyric-writing falls, at times, into bouts of cliche. In general, though, Perfect has done an able job of crafting a record for the working-class, everyday sort of chap in all of us. Neighbour's songs touch on themes of getting older, finding inspiration in the midst of daily responsibility, among some of the usual relationship-y type fodder that most of us can identify with. Being such an approachable and down to earth fellow as he is, none of this is surprising, and it's part of the band's charm. All this is part of the natural evolution of a modern rock band, and does little to deter the earnest nature of the EP.

Armed with a recent lineup change at lead guitar, and with a whole new set of life experiences to draw from, I can honestly say that I can't wait for HD's future output. This is a band that's hell-bent on making it places, and rather than take the usual "no hostages" approach, they're doing it in a fashion that's going to earn them a lot of friends (and fans) along the way. Perhaps there's a lesson in that for all of us.

Recommendation - I won't tell you not to buy this record, because it's a respectable effort for a more than respectable band, and certainly worthy of the meager amount of money you will spend on it. I do remain convinced, however, that these guys are capable of more; I also happen to know that they're in the midst of new recordings as this is being written (studio ones this time), so perhaps hold out and spend your hard earned dollars on future Handsome D albums; or, better yet, spend those bucks at one of their shows, which feature a lot of new material written after this record that is top-notch.

Audio - Handsome Distraction - Loose Ends

Bonus Review - How to Destroy Angels - Self Titled EP

Like most people, I enjoy free things. Often, though, free stuff isn't synonymous with quality stuff. Take the bag of CD cases that were offered to me today by my bandmate Mike: because I'm male, and because there's Italian blood running through my veins, I happily took them off of his hands; even though most of them are broken, and I don't even have any loose CDs in need of jewel cases, I took them because they were free, damnit, free!

With the way things are going in the music biz, however, free has gained a powerful ally. Myriad artists are putting their shit out on the market at a zero price point, and to whatever dubious end, as a music connoisseur I can't be too displeased at this development, particularly given that I've decided to go all self-righteous on ya'll.

And so it was that a couple of months back, the How to Destroy Angels EP wound up in my iTunes library au gratis. This is Trent Reznor's (of NIN fame) latest side project, consisting of him pushing buttons and twisting nobs, his wife Mariqueen Mandig on vocals, and Atticus Ross pulling crazy wheelies on his guitar (or the equivalent thereof).

This isn't Reznor's first foray into releasing material on the free: back in 2008 he threw up some of his Ghosts project free of charge. Reznor's always been in touch with the latest marketing trends, and so it's not surprising that he's taking advantage of his reputation to proliferate this latest effort. After all, tossing your newlywed wife behind the mic and slapping some synthetic beats behind her isn't going to inspire confidence in absolutely everybody, so it was probably wise to vet the new material by passing it through as many people's ear canals as possible. I'm glad he did, because the EP is really quite good and will see regular rotation on my playlist, and I'm sure he's quite glad he did too, because I and presumably some others would be inclined to purchase any future HTDA release that will, in all likelihood, not be priced at zero dollars.

The single being pushed off the EP is titled "A Drowning" and is quite indicative of the type of thing you will find on the record. I have a feeling it's the type of thing that will either truly resonate with the listener, or not really do anything for them at all. For one thing, Mandig's vocals are a bit of a make-or-break situation: they're a bit thin, quite ethereal--they sit on top of the electronica, seeming to flit to and fro with the movements of the music behind them. Reznor has implemented them adroitly, though, and I personally find her voice to be of a delicately beautiful texture, like a well-made mousse.

Reznor's beat making is delightfully simple, and I say delightfully because he has been known to stretch too far with his e-drums before. His last NIN album, Year Zero, suffered from this at times, even though I find him in general to be an excellent rhythm arranger. There are whispers of Prince in his beat-making, a distilled essence of a good beat that can be quite irresistible.

The lush textures on the album are exceedingly well done, and speak to the lessons he's learned in similar projects such as the Ghosts series. Yet make no mistake, at its heart this record is an extension of NIN: tracks such as "Fur Lined" could have been lifted straight off of Pretty Hate Machine. It's actually quite refreshing to see Reznor return to the synthy badassery of this side of his musical persona, and it's kind of eerie to hear a female channel his snarky vocal delivery in such an effective way. It's a welcome respite from Mandig's more whispered vocal tones, and shows that she has some range and versatility as a vocalist.

Recommendation - well, it's free, so go get it! Here's the link http://www.howtodestroyangels.com/ . If you like the sound of old-school NIN, and don't mind the occasional wandering into Ghosts and Year Zero territory, then this album will do something for you. Like a well-made mousse.

Audio: How To Destroy Angels - "Fur Lined"

Interpol - Self Titled

Interpol's one of those bands that straddle the line between indie cool and mainstream not-cool, or so would say the legion of Pitchfork readers who think they're rad because they totally get Animal Collective. They can appreciate the things they're doing, and they remember when nobody knew who they were and Slow Hands was on their Friday evening listening-party ipod playlist, so they're given a free pass. But hey, they've achieved some mainstream appeal, so there're a lot of hipsters out there who have just been waiting for Interpol to do something really wrong, really outrageously lame, so that they can topple their mighty empire and stomp all over their artfully-askew fedoras.

Enter Interpol, the band's fourth studio album. What is it? Hard to say, but people hate it. Pitchfork hates it, and so most bloggers out there hate it. Well, I shouldn't say they hate it; to hate it would be to admit that there's something to hate about it. Worse than that, they're indifferent toward it. That's the killing stroke as far as indie music reviews go. "Not bad, didn't mind some of the songs...not much to say about it though, sounds like a famous band going through the motions." Ouch. Right in the nuts. (That was a paraphrase btw; read the article if you want the same thing said in 1,692 words).

And it's a fair enough response to an album that certainly took me some time (approximately two weeks, ha!) to warm up to. In fact, this is my second go-around at posting on this album: the first one was full of woe-begotten "To where hath mine comely maiden Interpol flown?" type epithets, and a lengthy description of my years of young-adulthood when I discovered Interpol and fell in love with guitars that sound like they're being played at the end of a very long hallway filled with funhouse mirrors.

But that post no longer exists. I deleted it, because something clicked in the last few days of listening to this album. It's like a Pinkerton situation, except that I always loved Pinkerton, even as a confused 11 year old who wasn't quite sure what the whole Pink Triangle thing was getting at. It's an album that you initially dismiss, but refuse to relegate. I even thought about trading it in. Trading it in! I don't even remember that last time I traded in a record. It was probably at Rogers Jukebox on Fort Street, and it was probably a Nada Surf record. That was a while ago, like, when-Much-Music-actually-played-rock-music-videos-before-1 AM long ago.

It persisted, like an Italian mountain climber. Little by little it won me over, with its repeatedly excellent drum hooks, and its surprising well-arrangedness. What I initially took for flecks of apathy in Paul Banks vocal delivery became a sense of artful fatigue.

Interpol is one of those bands that has very little left to express musically. They have an admittedly limited range of timbres in their four records so far, and there's a sense that anything resembling a guitar in the +/- 12 panoramic dials of centre would be anaethema to their characteristic sound, and maybe that will ultimately be their demise. And yet, they continue to write songs that expand upon their previous work. Interpol feels like a spiritual successor to Our Love to Admire both in terms of theme and style, but it continues in a vein that seems to be building towards something. What is that something? I have no idea. It could be a reinvention. It could be more of the same; or it could be a self-induced implosion. Either way, the band is going somewhere, despite the insinuation in the popular media that they're just pushing out material to fill the void and make a quick buck. I don't buy it. I hear growth on this album, it's just growth at a pace that is satisfying to the casual listener.

What's wrong with a band that likes the way they sound, and wants to keep producing music that sounds similar? There's something comforting about a band that knows what its strengths are, knows which sound best expresses what they're feeling, and can write a bunch o' songs along those lines. I mean, hell, they could keep writing ear-worm bass hooks and guitar one-off riffs as were found on Antics til the cows come home, but they've expanded on that sound. So it's taken them two albums to expand that sound to where they want it to be: so what?

The concept album is back in style, and as with the last record I talked about, Interpol is meant to be enjoyed in one sitting, front-to-back, in order. I'm usually a bit leery of this approach to album-making, as it takes what's so very powerful and beautiful about an album of music: the ability of each song to stand on its own two feet, while simultaneously reflecting the whole, and diminishes some aspect of that. This record, however, doesn't feel like a diminishing of the spirit of musicality: the songs are able to stand alone, and it wasn't until I read elsewhere that I learned that they're all following a theme. The Suburbs was the same way: it's a concept album, but it could easily not be a concept album. To achieve what it set out to, that is to provide a different listening experience as a body of work as well as a collection of single tracks, is a difficult feat, and one that I will give them credit for pulling off.

This is certainly not a single-heavy record. Those looking for the kind of infectious pop of "Evil" or "Slow Hands" or even "The Heinrich Maneuver." In fact, for all the talk in this review of progression, the album is most like Turn On the Bright Lights in that for all its effectiveness, it is not a pop record. The band has certainly taken a different approach, but it feels much like that first album in that it seems to be made entirely on their own terms.

So there it is. Is it a great album? No, probably not. I don't think it's a failure to live up to something, as most reviews have suggested: I don't think that the band is striving for immutable greatness. Instead, I think they're trying to express a feeling, and express it in as grand a way possible, and in that they perhaps come up a bit short. There was room for these songs to be refined into something better, more concrete, but that's not to say that the album's a failure. It's guaranteed to be quite unlike anything else in your music library--including other Interpol albums--and that's never a bad thing. I think once the band finds its new identity in its post-Carlos-D existence, the lessons learned on this record will yield some extraordinary results.

Recommendation: If you're a fan of the band, buy it. It will be something you can chew on for a while and grow to like, if not love. If you're new to Interpol, start elsewhere, with TOTBL or Antics. To be sure, there will be better uses of your money this year, but Interpol is an album you may enjoy investing some time and money into. After all, my favourite Interpol album is still Our Love to Admire, which the rest of the world seems to revile, so perhaps you as well will poo-poo the naysayers and find something of merit on this record.

PS - the album art is really quite tragic. It's like mid-90's AutoCAD gone wrong. What were they thinking?

Introduction/Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Greetings, and welcome to the first post of (hopefully) many in my new blog, The Paycheque Review.

The concept is simple: every paycheque, I will purchase a new album, listen to it intently, and then share my thoughts with you, the reader. These record purchases will often be newly released titles, but will also incorporate some older records that perhaps didn't get their time in the sun when they were first released. My objective is to spur the discussion of new music, and to do my part in helping music to become a prominent part of our lives once more, and not just pleasant background fodder for other, more important things.

Some notes about the writer: I'm a 25-year-old male who resides in Victoria, British Columbia. I am the lead singer of this band: http://www.yearoftheratmusic.com . My music of choice is rock and roll (in all its incarnations), but I also enjoy dance music, hip hop, classical, old school R&B (think Motown) and 80s/early 90s pop. I have no great love of jazz, most types of heavy metal, hardcore or modern pop, so you won't find any reviews of said genres in this blog.

As of recently, I buy all of the music that I listen to. For years I, like many others of my generation, downloaded a vast quantity of music illegally. I'm not passing judgment or giving any kind of value statement about the state of music ownership, but merely stating that it is my personal view that music is becoming increasingly valueless as a result of our practices and attitudes toward it. I believed for a long time that my actions had no discernable effect on the music industry or upon individual artists, until I became one myself and realized that the trickle-down effect has a large impact upon the way that people view music as a product. In trying to promote and sell my band's recently-released debut EP, I have encountered a great deal of antipathy from people with regards to purchasing music, even in support of grassroots bands such as ourselves.

Alright, soapbox rant over. I hope that this blog convinces you to buy the occasional album, and if you go to a live show (which you should wherever possible), please, for the love of Vishnu, buy the band's merchandise if they entertain you. It goes such a long way in supporting them not only financially, but emotionally as well.

One final note: While I will only actually do a review of a commercial album every two weeks, I'm happy to review any smaller band's release in the intervening time between commercial reviews. So, if you're a band that's looking to get a review (however insignificant as mine might be), please feel free to send me a link to your stuff (or mail me a copy of your album, I'll provide an address if you email me) and I will get to it when I am able.

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

I'm sure that many Canadians have as personal an association with Arcade Fire as I do. They're one of those rare bands that seem to reach out and touch people from all walks of life, especially in this country, where the band has become something of an establishment.

My first memory of the band comes from about 2004. I had recently moved into the detached suite in my parents' house, which was my first taste of personal freedom, and Funeral was the soundtrack to those first few blissful months of cleaning the place up and making it mine. I have one of those peculiarly vivid memories that we sometimes have of the jejune of blaring "Neighbourhood #2 (Laika)" and "Wake Up" while washing an entire eight-piece set of hideous Martha Stewart dishes. I think I probably ran through that disc about four times as I scrubbed the factory crud off of lavender-coloured crockery.

I'm notoriously rough on my personal belongings, and my copy of Funeral is a testament to this fact: like a well-loved softcover book, the cardboard sleeve is creased and dented, the flimsy paper insert torn in places and coffee-stained. Whoever lends me a book is usually in for a bit of a shock when they receive back a dog-eared, mangled corpse of their once-pristine document, but to me this has always been the evidence of love and attachment. It's for this reason that I always gravitate to cardboard CD sleeves over plastic jewel cases, they just feel so much more personal to me. Perhaps I just like to wreck things.

The cover of The Suburbs is beautifully nondescript, in much the same way that Funeral's was. It looks like something the band members themselves could have come up with, and perhaps did. Printed on glossy cardboard, it resembles an old family photograph, the kind you might forget about in some dusty volume of family memories, hiding in an attic to be discovered at some unknown future juncture. The insert is similarly homey: lyrics are scrawled in what is presumed to be Win Butler's handwriting across several pages of dull images. It's perfectly comforting and simultaneously depressing, in much the same way that the suburbs themselves are.

I listen to a lot of my music in the car. I have a stock sound system in my old Hyundai, but I still love the way that the music surrounds me in such an enclosed environment. My first listen to The Suburbs was on my way to work, a twenty minute drive from my house. In this space of time I was roughly able to acquaint myself with the album's first four tracks: "The Suburbs," "Ready to Start," "Modern Man" and "Rococo." I can safely say that few times in my entire history of music listening have four songs drawn me into album in such a way that these four tracks did. "The Suburbs" is a gloriously haunting, lilting reflection on growing up in the 'burbs, and remains perhaps my favourite song on the album. I was already familiar with "Ready to Start" from its radio play as the first single off the record, but it was only after listening to it in full stereo glory that I realized how much I love this song: in it the band realize their full pop potential, deploying a clever, jaunty bassline to carry you through a dazzling array of synth hooks and reserved-yet-emotionally-cloying vocals. "Modern Man" switches things up with a rarely-used but always effective 7/4 beat, and is one of those songs that embeds itself a little further in your heart with every listen.

With 16 tracks, the album certainly had room to be organized in many different ways. The range of songs, both thematically and stylistically, probably made for some tough calls in terms of song order, but to their credit the band seemingly shied away from attempting any kind of deliberate "movements" throughout the record. Instead, they allow each song to speak for itself, while simultaneously contributing to the whole. The middle five songs of the album are probably the most contiguous, which is something of a given considering the duality of "Half Light I" & "Half Light II." This was the section that required the most chewing for me to really digest, but after many listens I can number "City with No Children" and "Suburban War" among the tracks I commonly skip to. "Month of May" is obvious single-fodder, which for me is often something to be slightly wary of, and sure enough it's probably the one track on the album where it feels like the band is grasping at something slightly beyond their reach. Still, it's always good to know that a band so comfortable with throwing a French horn on a recording is still able to acknowledge that little bit of The Clash lurking inside of them.

As the album moves into the home stretch, it has a lot of love left to give: "Wasted Hours" is the kind of power folk that I haven't heard since Neil Young was, well, young, and "We Used To Wait" showcases some of the most wonderfully simple poignancy I've ever heard in lyric writing. It really resonated with me in terms of my own feelings on how our attitudes and values are changing in the technological age.

Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) continues the band's experimentation with synthesis and sequencing, and also lends a much-needed break from Butler's effective yet somewhat thin attack by utilising Regine Chassagne's ever-unique, Bjork-esque ghost-croon. It's a dancey departure from the rest of the album's tone, and an interesting way to close things out.

Recommendation: Buy it. This is an instant classic, and a true return to form after the band's nigh-misstep Neon Bible. It's one of those albums that will be at the top of your shelf for years, if not forever. As for my copy, well, it's destined to be creased, dented and generally look like it's been dragged through hell and back, which seems to be the highest compliment I can pay something.