Challengers
THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS
(Matador)
Over The New Pornographer's seven years and three previous albums, reviewers have exhausted the summertime metaphors trying to conjure up the band's particular brand of indie-power-pop. Admittedly, the group's new album, Challengers, is a perfect soundtrack for waxing down the surfboard, gassing up the jalopy and cruising down for some fun in the sun. But there's a problem: As soon as your bathing suit is crusty and dry, as soon as the beach bonfire dies out, as soon as the disc stops spinning, you can't remember a single damn song.
This situation is odd, because the Pornos do everything right musically. The loose collective (helmed by Vancouver-to-Brooklyn transplant A.C. Newman) has talent to burn; they're able to flawlessly execute on a wide variety of instruments — drums, guitar, bass, sure, but also on mandolin, banjo, Wurlitzer and all kinds of other keyboards. And while Newman isn't much of a vocalist, alt-country chanteuse Neko Case makes up for it by lending her always-gorgeous pipes to a few tracks.
What handicaps the project is the way Pornos songs always seem constructed rather than written. "Myriad Harbour," for instance, sounds like several songs squashed together into a whole so unwieldy that nothing stands out. That musical strategy meets up with lyrics that are inscrutable, even meaningless — and not even meaningless in the playful, expressive way common in indie-rock.
Challengers sounds immaculate, every note in its right place. But the thing lacks heart. And wasn't the whole point of indie-rock — and punk before it — that talent matters less than imagination, that skill matters less than feel, that perfection matters less than guts? 2.5 stars —Cooper Levey-Baker
House of Vibes Revisited
THE GRIP WEEDS
(Ground Up)
I don't recall ever receiving a reissue replete with state-of-the-art remix and bonus material — from a band that I never heard of. I guess, after so many years of rock scribing, it was bound to happen. Enter The Grip Weeds, an indie quartet from New Jersey that took it upon themselves to give their 1994 debut album House of Vibes, a "new coat of paint." The result is an unexpected surprise. The Grip Weeds deftly blend '60s-style power-pop with elements of jangle, psychedelia and garage, most obviously referencing The Who, The Beatles and The Byrds. No, this is not original-sounding stuff, but it's damn catchy and well-executed. The original LP was recorded on a home 8-track in the house where the band lived; for this project, they digitized the material, cleaned it up and gave it more oomph. Thankfully, the makeover doesn't sterilize the music, but it does modernize it. Filling out the package are a handful of demos, a live acoustic radio broadcast and a couple of live electric numbers. 3.5 stars —Eric Snider
Anchors & Anvils
AMY LAVERE
(Archer )
Don't let the shy, innocent voice mislead. LaVere, who played Wanda Jackson in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, sings jazz-tinged Southern soul songs that are dark, candid and occasionally startling. These are booze ballads and murder reports, story songs that speak to loneliness and love and betrayal. Anchors & Anvils, which is LaVere's second album, contains the self-penned "Killing Him," a song that's as charming as it is strange. An unhappy wife stabs her husband to death — only to find her love for him grows stronger. "Killing Him" is built around a loping melody and an R&B groove that's propelled by LaVere's stand-up bass playing and augmented with plaintive fiddle and the Wurlitzer of Jim Dickinson, the legendary Memphis session man and producer (Big Star, The Replacements) who helmed this album. 3.5 stars —Wade Tatangelo
Now You Are This
NUMBERS
(Kill Rock Stars)
Plenty of bands check the box next to "My Bloody Valentine" on the influences section of their application to Indie Rock U, but few have put in the all-night study sessions necessary to successfully conjure the shoegaze sound. On their fourth original full-length, San Francisco three-piece Numbers show they've done their homework, layering scratchy feedback and synthesized doo-dads on top of primitively sung indie-dance tracks. The resulting hybrid sounds oddly fresh and redundant at the same time, as if the band hasn't yet figured out how to synthesize all their prior course work into a convincing senior thesis. 3 stars —CLB
This article appears in Aug 22-28, 2007.