Pitchfork / August 27, 2008
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/144817-tk-webb-the-visions-ancestor
TK Webb & Visions: Ancestor
Dutiful research tells us that Thomas Kelly Webb has been rocking and rolling for a long time, since his then-tiny fingers could first flip through Jimmy Page's mighty riffbook. Since relocating from Kansas City to Brooklyn in the late 1990s, Webb has developed a name downtown for his fire-breathing guitar heroics, laying lonely Delta sounds to tape but often busting amps and heads when the dedicated come to see him plug in and make with the shred. But anyone ready to hear more of the empty suitcase blues that inhabited Webb's previous outing, 2006's Phantom Parade, should prepare for a superfuzzed-out departure of redwood-sized proportions.
Ancestor is the fitting title of Webb and his newly christened Visions' first offering. Formed last summer, the Visions feature ex-members of Love as Laughter and Blood on the Wall, the most noticeable addition being second guitarist Brian Hale. Alongside the Visions, Webb's sound and songwriting vision (not intended) have taken a King Kong leap towards achieving a breadth that mirrors his talents, even if the result occasionally misses its mark.
Maybe it's not such a leap after all. From the first few groans and juggernaut kicks of opener "Teen Is Still Shaking", it becomes clear that Webb has come back to his first love: hard rock. Ancestor is a Porterhouse-thick compendium on rock: From the golden 1970s to the muddy 90s, J Mascis to Kim Thayil, leather to denim, David Allan Coe rebel honky-tonk to Paul Westerberg's scrappy white boy blues, Webb is all over the map here and much of the album's fun is found in spotting footnotes, every lick and flourish arriving to as much sweet bewilderment as many of the pop snippets sewn together on a Girl Talk party jam. If you're a guitar rock junkie.
If not, Ancestor's still impressive. Though he flirts dangerously with rock's pitfalls, Webb's developed a strong ear for fusing all these elements and styles together his own way without coming off like a cornball. This, from a man with a catcher's mitt voice like Mellencamp's (Don't run! It's awesome!) and a gift for radioactive solos that could both unzip dresses and leave shiners. Two of said solos bookend the monstrous "God Bless the Little Angels"; more sensible men would probably place an eight-minute study in psychedelic uppercuts somewhere in the waning breaths of an album, but the Visions switch to kill fairly quickly. "Patience & Fortitude" is a great name for an acoustic sigh that requires both, while "Isle of Grizzly White" and "Shame" feel like throwaways unable to subsist on faceless crunch alone. Which is precisely why closer "Time to Go" saves the day by showing some restraint. Clocking in at just over three minutes but still containing all the lard-less dreamweaving you'd expect, it's a nice parting gift that even features vocals from Love as Laughter's Sam Jayne.
Webb's dalliances with purist blues were a respectful, accurate channeling but this feels more like home. Where Phantom Parade tapped that vein so specifically, Ancestor opens floodgates similar to the giant door that sits front and center on its cover. Just consider growing your hair out a bit longer before you head inside.
Pitchfork / August 11, 2008
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/142754-rainbow-arabia-basta-ep
Rainbow Arabia: Basta EP
The opening seconds of Rainbow Arabia's debut EP are more knuckleball than curve: "Omar K" begins with chanted call-and-response vocals, and what at first seems like it might be a well-timed study of traditional West African music quickly veers a good distance eastward, and makes clear which global destination the duo have actually mined for so much inspiration. With a name like theirs, of course, you should have little trouble figuring out where to look to get some sense of what informs not just their keffiyeh-fied aesthetic but their Cairo-via-Echo Park primitivist dance hybrid as well. Big hint.
Rainbow Arabia are married couple Danny and Tiffany Preston, formerly of L.A. dub-punkers Future Pigeon. As with their earlier band, Rainbow Arabia are out for your hips, and this first effort is strangely propulsive. While press materials state that the two combine Middle Eastern flavors with American experimental dance music, I'm not sure there's anything especially "American" about their project aside from its mailing address. On the other hand, because their music is so attached to the region and its rumble, I can't help but wonder what kind of reaction the Basta EP might elicit from ears that grew up with those sounds. Fairly or not, questions of authenticity are destined to haunt this band.
Musically, Rainbow Arabia work a pretty minimal setup. While the overall vibe stays in place, their means of execution requires many parts. The synth and drum machine workouts are certainly house-meets-tribal, but the menacing beats realized in "Let Them Dance" and "Hear No See No" aren't what lend those particular cuts their bones. What really sticks out are the serpentine guitar lines that slither their way through the EP, sometimes taking on the shape of post-punk spikes, garage crunch, and Edge-like delay effects. That sort of guitar eclecticism is mirrored in turn by Tiffany Preston, whose yips, yaps, and prairie crows work well in the Rainbow Arabia's efforts to transport as much as immerse. An easy reference point would be Ponytail's whirling frontwoman Molly Siegel. While her vocal turns aren't nearly so easy to place stylistically, the two both hit high registers some might call distracting more than complimentary.
The fifth and final track on this 20-minute EP, "The Basta", opens by sampling video game effects that, according to the eternal geek in me, can be traced to 80s SEGA quarter-vacuum Altered Beast. That's one way to kick off an off-kilter dance track punctuated most memorably by Tiffany Preston's last few yelps, I guess; but it also points to a possible way forward. You could easily argue that, given their commitment to their influences, Rainbow Arabia don't have many options when it comes to their next move. Could be, but this closer shows that that they've still managed to find a few interesting keepsakes in this bazaar they've gotten lost in.
Pitchfork / August 5, 2008
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/142603-the-curse-of-company-leo-magnets-joins-a-gang
The Curse of Company: Leo Magnets Joins a Gang
David "Wiley" Rennick seems like a guy with a good sense of humor. Everyman for Sydney indie-pop outfit Dappled Cities, the guitarist/keyboardist/producer came up with a great name for his first trek into side-project territory: the Curse of Company. A concept-ish four-piece that includes Sarah Kelly and Tim Rogers of the Red Sun Band and Jack Ladder, it's what someone familiar with the scene might call a Sydney supergroup. Dig or no dig, Rennick has taken a turn of understated variety. Well, sort of. Dappled Cities' last outing, Granddance, was a tasty study in upside-down guitar pop that took comfort in stretching melodies out skillfully and often with lasting effect. But as much as Granddance boasted nun-tight songwriting, its eclecticism (the scattering of pages torn from the books of bands like Flaming Lips, Shins, Strokes, and others) was often its strongest muscle set. They kicked out large (they're still reported to be releasing a follow-up to last year's Granddance sometime in 2009) kaleidoscopic jams, and they did it democratically.
The Curse of Company departs from this vantage point; with the exception of spectral vocal calls from Kelly, this is very much the Wiley Show. And though these songs lurk in quiet spaces, the album's period-piece aesthetic is torn of a much grander fabric. Based on the myth of Leo Magnets-- hermetic ruffian, wanderer, and composer, who, according to press release mystique, has beefed with Rennick since the 90s-- Leo Magnets Joins a Gang relies heavily on myth and not enough on Rennick's gifts for hooks. Magnets is said to hail from the Australian bush and its many vistas serve as backdrops here, though void of any healthy dollop of color. It's the sort of cinematic imbalance one could relish, but unfortunately its ideas obscure any entry point to the album more than illuminate it. In the end, it serves more as food for imagining than listening.
Opener "The Parade Devine" sets the tone early-- a snare-fueled march that's capsized by its own sighing, it's a caplet of the sluggish, minor-chord pageantry and quiet-loud-quiet-loud dynamics that cage a lot of the album's many prettier moments. Caverns worth of echo and reverb lend Rennick's vocals a distance fitting for the sort of epistolary longing his musings would require, though it strips away much of the immediacy for which these songs tend to pine just as intensely, if not more. And though vocal interplay between Rennick and Kelly become routinely angelic (see: "Homecoming"), their turns mirror the few speeds this baby has: plod and clop. Alone or together, nothing could exemplify the problem more than "Side By Side", a torpid waltz that wobbles and moans for just south of nine non-descript minutes. But despite that chasm in the middle of it all, "Oh Brother" washes dude clean of many a sin. It's a taut, rusted-string guitar closer with lines as precede them but with a catch. All that waiting and building leads somewhere: an exit point that's not only cathartic, it kinda rules.