AWmusic

Misha is an Electronica group from New York comprised of model Ashley Yao and John Chao. They sound like an electronic based version of the Cocteau Twins, very soft, very airy, very dreamy. The interesting part of this boy/girl group is that John is the vocalist and apparently, Ash the producer. Interesting. Particularly since, I’m used to hearing lullaby vocals from Asian female singers, but not quite the males. And this man sounds like he’s constantly singing a love lullaby for children. For non-Asian music listeners, this is somewhat unusual I guess. But for anybody who listens to enough Asian music – with the exception of Korean music, who for some odd reason love the gospel choir style – a lullaby slow jam is a regular thing.

Like last week’s Kraak & Smaak review, Misha‘s 2007 Teardrop Sweetheart makes for good background music. I would say more specifically, study music. It’s the type of music, you play and next thing you know it’s done (40 minutes short only). You wonder, where did the songs go? The lyrics are not particularly interesting. In fact, half the time, it’s so drowsy sounding I don’t know what he’s saying. He does however, for the first half of the album, have a very pronounced way of singing — it’s just not interesting enough to keep me awake. Then, there’s the lullaby element, which is not for everybody. It’s actually somewhat disturbing when he’s singing the ever-so-unoriginal lyrics, “Anaconda, sitting in a Honda, waiting for the backseat show, she’s go go go, and I’m shaking my pom pom bon bons” on Anaconda. Sexual content + lullaby (when you sound like you’re singing for children) = disturbing.

The first couple of tracks sound Bossa Nova-ish (+lullaby of course) with xylophones and light acoustic guitars. The album starts picking up and heading into a different direction around the 5th track (Summersend). The words become inaudible, but I know Ash (the girl) starts contributing some vocals. It’s a great combination because her voice is light too but not as pronounced as his. The entire Cruelish Heart track is sung in a “funny” voice (I don’t know what it’s called, I just know Kanye & Jay-Z use it a lot). And for the rest of the album, John drops the lullaby act and picks up a John Lennon influenced slur on his vocals. Still, there is that soft airy/dreamy element to it, but the track become darker. This is when I actually start enjoying the album.

My favourites: The Book (of Glaciers), Cruelish Heart, and Weatherbees.

Misha – Crystal In Love

Misha – The Book (Of Glaciers)

Misha – Cruelish Heart

I have a confession: one of my friends works for the band. So I’m sure SaraMarie Harding would appreciate a glowing revue so here goes:

The band was terrific (actually quite accurate, they were terrific), the audience loved them (which is again true) and everyone had a great time (can’t speak for everyone but I certainly did). All that was said without any money or graft changing hands.

I have seen October Sky maybe 3 times now and each time they just keep getting better. Coming off a 20 date tour in which they opened for Mobile, they sound much tighter and self-assured than the first time I saw them at the ElMo back in August. They have often been compared to a cross between Muse and Radiohead and certainly there is that element to their music but I don’t like to make comparisons, I like to judge each band on their own merits.

October Sky can certainly hold their own with some of the best Canadian bands touring right now. Their songs are sonically filling with lots of atmospherics and driving rhythms. And, to be honest it is really great to hear a band with a rhythm section that actually knows what it’s there for. The drumming dares you to ignore them and drives the songs along giving the vocals and guitar the support they need.

The band is LOUD! and that’s a good thing. The songs are well-written and delivered with confidence and passion. The lyrics could use improvement, imho, but it could be they suffer in translation but that’s a minor quibble unless you are a lyric snob. Karl Raymond’s voice is certainly one of the best I’ve heard in a while, nice range with a clear, clean upper register and good pitch control. His guitar work was also impressive and I liked that he didn’t indulge in gratuitous guitar solos. All the solos were completely within the context of the song and enhanced the piece rather than standing out like a sore thumb.

The stand-out song of the night is a new one that will be on their new CD that will appear sometime in 2010. They will be touring through much of 2009 and so writing and recording will be done at a later date. The song is called “Failure” and, like their others, could easily fill a much larger venue with it’s sound. “Hell Isn’t My Home”, and new single “Sacrifice” were also strong songs that pleased the crowd. “Sacrifice” opened the set and was a real attention-getter. It served notice to the crowd that they were in for something special. And the last song, “Fear”, left my ears bleeding, in a good way.

October Sky will be playing December 18 at the Silver Dollar Room, 486 Spadina Ave., Toronto. Opening bands include The Merry Warners, The Invisible Mouth and Reverse Mount Rushmore.

October Sky are also a featured artist on MySpace so go check them out. Also, you can watch videos of their tour on their MySpace page, and be sure to come to their live show, you won’t be disappointed.

October Sky – Sacrifice
October Sky – Hell Isn’t My Home
October Sky – Hit The Ground
October Sky – The Message

October Sky MySpace
October Sky Official Site

Sonic Youth is one of the few bands I have consistently enjoyed for many years, and frankly, though they have been covered to hell and back, I always welcome another group eager to represent its old material in new forms . . . albeit with slight suspicion. For example, I didn’t mind Ruby Isle’s rather campy cover of “Teenage Riot,” though I found the singer’s voice as annoying as Kevin Barnes‘, while not nearly as proficient or interesting. Their replacement of guitars with synths was an intuitive contemporary choice, but not executed the best way, in my opinion. (They eschewed the drone-effect which is peculiar, crucial to the song.)

Belgian band Wixel (who list “acousmatic” and “shoegaze” as genre labels) have redesigned seven classic Sonic Youth tracks in ambient style. Those of us used to Thurston Moore‘s cool vocal delivery or Kim Gordon‘s strained effects on the microphone, not to mention Lee Ranaldo‘s tearing guitar, should probably brew ourselves some opium tea and prepare to ingest these low-impact versions another way.

I am glad, first of all, for the simplicity of these re-arrangements. Wixel recaptures noise through synthesized instruments, and the band is careful never to overwhelm (even if that happens to be the wish of the original song). The huge whammy guitars of “Expressway to Yr Skull” are replaced with atmospheric piano, glockenspiel, and synths rather reminiscent of Harold Budd and Brian Eno’s collaborations. The noisy “Teenage Riot” finds itself sliced to half its length, and rendered barely recognizable. (Listen for yourself below.) We also discover on the album a song called “Little Trouble Girl,” a beautiful number off of SY’s 1995 Washing Machine, which featured The Pixies’ and Breeders’ Kim Deal on vocals, which Wixel redoes with acoustic guitars, sans vocals of course.

What happens on this album, I suppose, is the transformation of Sonic Youth songs into sounds the band would never use, their transformation into otherwise than Sonic Youth songs, in short. It may be a testament to Wixel’s ingenuity that the immediately recognizable melody of “Schizophrenia” is deferred until three-and-a-half minutes in the cover version, but the absent lyrical content, while it may be ignorable or even apt in other Sonic Youth covers, is something I genuinely miss on this version. “Shadow Of A Doubt” (from their 1986 album EVOL, and one of my favourite SY tracks) is the only one on the album which makes a point of retaining the original character of the song. No accordions or xylophones here; instead, Wixel employs a swashbuckling distorted guitar, which replicates some of its noisier elements.

Out of the wilderness of 1980s independent music in America, long before Myspace and web networking, when isolated local scenes were still loosely connected by touring bands and fanzines, fame was elusive; and yet by 1991, “the year punk broke,” Sonic Youth had established itself as the godfather band of punk/indie. The group deserves its accolades and remembrances by others, and this re-designed collection of some classic material is not at all a bad salute by Wixel. I’d give it a 7.3 out of 10.

Wixel-Expressway To Yr Skull
Wixel-Teenage Riot
Wixel-Scizophrenia

I think that it’s worth trying to explain what kind of music they make, although it’s surely more than the sum of its parts. For starters, Zack’s rapping is less forceful than it is in RATM. It fits the music well, seeing as how the music is as much electronica as it is hip hop, in my opinion. There are few obvious instrumental hooks, but the songs are interesting enough backdrops for the vocals.

While the flow is less aggressive than you might expect, it is soulful, and the rhythm and timing are great. This makes the songs pretty accessible, as do the lyrics. They’re very confrontational, needless to say, but I find an ever present sense of optimism even when Zack is describing negative situations. I get a sense of “This is messed up, but at least we recognize that,” sort of point of view. I always liked the phrase that the band took their name from, and it might give a good idea as to their mission statement: “It’s better to live one day as a lion, than a thousand years as a lamb.”

I admit that I’d be thrilled to buy a CD that features Zack de la Rocha whispering lyrics while someone beats a trashcan. This is a lot better than that would be—although who can say for sure how great that would be? Zack’s ideas are as relevant as ever, and I think that it’s great news that he’s back recording again. But One Day As A Lion is not a Rage copy—not even close. It should appeal to anyone into experimental/alternative forms of hip hop and rock, and it should definitely satisfy anyone who was into Rage Against The Machine for more than just the headbanging and creative guitar playing. It was revealed fairly recently that ODAAL plan to put out a full length album and then tour, and I can’t wait.

Wild International by One Day As A Lion

Buy this
EP

The Crystal Stilts are from Brooklyn and one of their members, Frankie Rose was a former member of the Vivian Girls. Other then that, I know very little about this band but I was given the chance to check out their album, “Alight Of Night” and I’ve gotten the chance to listen to it for the last few weeks.

Being the type to mention some type of general classification, Crystal Stilts make some sort of shoegaze-pop and the leadsinger sounds a lot like Stephen Merritt of the Magnetic Fields.

I am not sure if I’m a fan of shoegaze personally, however I do enjoy a lot of the blending on guitar effects and the vocal melodies of the lead singer. There’s an emphasis on the artistry of the musicians, which in this case is top notch.

While it’s not too difficult to see that some of these songs are quite simple in nature (aside from the guitar work/effects), a lot of the songs have a catchy nature to them right off the bat. The first song I really enjoyed was the self-titled track name, Crystal Stilts with a simple guitar riff and some keyboarding that kicks in half way make this a rather enjoyable song. My next favorite track is “Shattered Shine” which follows the same pattern for under 3 minutes. The next track I really liked was “Prismatic Room”, which I actually like for the vocals. The leadsinger (who I don’t know the name of so I just won’t get it wrong) does a great job here making an awesome noise-dream pop track.

There are many good tracks on this album and like my previous album review today, it again does not have as strong of a replay value as I would like. I was incredibly high on this album at one point, thinking that it may be a candidate for my top albums of the year but it came clear it’s a notch below that level.

I think one of the main reasons it doesn’t have a good replay value is that the tracks do a wonderful job of disguising a track that is simple in nature but sounds incredibly artistic initially. Still, to say they aren’t artistic at all is not justified in the least and they do make a decent album with some very good songs and at least made an attempt to experiment.

Rating: 4 out of 5
Good, not great.

Crystal Stilts by Crystal Stilts
Shattered Shine by Crystal Stilts