Roommate – Make Like

Make Like

Amid the devalued, ever-evolving music stream, most craft are bright and flashy yet flimsy and insubstantial, offering little more than brief respite from the waves before they dissolve into nothing or sink from view. Precious few craft give pause, feel solid or lovingly constructed, make you feel you could sail in them a while. Roommate's Make Like – which came to my attention thanks to a glowing review on Coke Machine Glow – has stood me in excellent stead for weeks now, its reassuringly lived-in, woody timbre holding me close like an old friend. I have no plans to abandon this ship anytime soon.

Roommate

Roommate is the songwriting vehicle of Kent Lambert, now four albums deep. Kent and his band – including Sam Wagster on guitar, Gillian Lisée on bass, and Seth Vanek on drums – have brought all their sensitivity and expertise to bear on these eight songs. As much as I'm warming to their preceding albums – Songs The Animals Taught Us (2006), We Were Enchanted (2008) and Guilty Rainbow (2011) – the more I listen to Roommate's discography, the more Make Like feels like a culmination of all that's come before it – a distillation of an aesthetic and a refinement of purpose. Just shy of forty minutes, the album is astute, economical, meticulously performed and produced, and deeply affecting, both lyrically and musically. It's a thoroughly satisfying whole, an unselfconsciously classic-sounding record with masterful segues and a neat division into two sides that no doubt rewards listening on vinyl (the album was mastered and cut by the legendary Rashad Becker). In what remains of 2015, it's quickly assuming the same prominence in my life as Adult Jazz's Gist Is had in 2014.

What's most beguiling is how the album reminds me of several other artists and bands I love without being obviously influenced by anything in particular. At moments I hear the measured cadence and melodic nous of early Shins; the aching piano-driven beauty of Automatic For The People-era REM; the stoic magic of the sorely missed Sparklehorse. However, its true beauty, and singularity, only reveals itself with intimacy.

Make Like gets its (secret) claws in early thanks to something as simple as a drum beat. Back in the early '00s, I took a road trip across the US with my close friend Will. The album on continuous rotation during that trip was The Sebadoh, which kicks off with the great Jason Loewenstein song 'It's All You'. The drum beat that begins Make Like's opener 'People On Screens' is similarly catchy. Drum sounds tend to be fetishised to an absurd degree, but my instinctive response to this beat is to get fired up, ready to stick around for the duration.

As a commuter myself, the image of 'People On Screens' is all too familiar: half-asleep humans glued to their smartphones, unable to bear being alone with themselves, semi-engaged with shallow, distracting content. The song crams in enough devious production details (shakers, synths, effects) to make Spoon jealous, before building to an agitated crescendo of flanged guitars. Then, a segue into 'Secret Claw', which cements the feeling of experiencing something special, its eerie swells of brass and piano akin to a giant existential yawn.

Despite being one of the least musically dynamic tracks, 'Dancer Howl' is easily the most lyrically affecting – and seems to hold the key to the themes of the whole record: fear, dishonesty, redemption, all wrapped up in the mystery of human stupidity. Towards the song's climax, as Gillian Lisée joins Lambert on vocals, handclaps crunching disconsolately behind them, the atmosphere is close to overwhelming. Rounding out the first side with peals of aching pedal steel, 'Curses' features a winning vibraphone and piano melody that vividly reminds me of something I can't quite put my finger on (dEUS, perhaps?).

The first half of side two is unashamedly gorgeous. 'Wilderness' evolves from a desolate piano ballad into a delirious, widescreen extravaganza akin to The Besnard Lakes, before seguing into the fidgety 'Old Golden', with its anxious refrain, "I am choking on an old golden rule". While the closing two songs took the longest to win me over, they end the album on an ambiguous note, inevitably sending me back to 'People On Screens'; indeed, the lyrics of 'Riot Size' suggest this circularity with the lyrics, "Shiny things on tiny screens inviting us to fight, to justify". Plus, the way 'Tri Twi' weaves its tapestry of jazzy flutes and wah-wah guitar suggests a hazy, cinematic dissolve, leaving one indelible line to ponder at the album's climax: "I've been you / One day you will have been me, too".

A thread of heartening resilience runs through Make Like's atmosphere of confusion and frustration, while the balance it sustains between the widescreen and the intimate rewards repeat listens with fresh revelations. Ultimately, perhaps the single enduring idea I take away from this extraordinary album is a line from 'Dancer Howl': "Don't make like hate, when you're really just afraid".   

Make Like is available now on cassette, vinyl and digital download.

Rae Howell – Invisible Wilderness

As I edge ever closer to silence in the realm of music reviewing, consistently struggling to find things to say, it can be the most tenuous connections that draw me back to writing. Over 10 years ago, not long after settling in Melbourne, I saw The Sunwrae Ensemble supporting post-rock band This Is Your Captain Speaking, and wrote about the gig for Luna Kafé. Considering 'Sunwrae' isn't exactly the jackpot of Google search terms, it's no surprise that Rae Howell, former leader of The Sunwrae Ensemble, got in touch in the hope that I might be interested in reviewing her latest release. Howell has relocated to London, and recorded this album in the US, but she returns to Australia this month to support its release.

Invisible Wilderness is, dauntingly, a double album of solo keyboard compositions. The first disc is the more traditional presentation, a relatively 'pure' recording, performed on a Steinway concert grand, the Rolls Royce of pianos. The second disc introduces the delectable tones of the Fender Rhodes electric piano on a few tracks, such as the gorgeous 'Train In The Night' and the plaintive, jazzy 'Do You Mind'. And, in a similar vein to Nils Frahm's Felt, the recording often foregrounds the incidental piano noises that most engineers seek to minimise: the gentle thrum of the hammers on the strings; the creak of wood; the gentle squeak and clack of the instrument's pedals.

Considering this release comprises, for the most part, nearly two hours of solo piano, I'm surprised how seldom my interest wanes. (Admittedly, it is the kind of music that's easy to pop on in the background while reading or working.) The two tracks that appear on both discs in slightly different forms – the title track and 'The Owl & The Eagle' – predictably feature the album's most memorable melodies. The album's longest piece, 'Faraway Castle', is reminiscent of Yann Tiersen's wonderful soundtrack to Amelie. And 'Synapse', the brief but haunting closer to disc two, is a tantalising taste of potentially fruitful future directions.

'Synapse' contrasts markedly with 'Incognito', the first disc's second track, a cruelly early juncture at which my misgivings about this album first arose. Cloyingly saccharine, the piece wouldn't sound out of place in a sentimental movie soundtrack, and is especially conspicuous among the more restrained moods of the other pieces. Another misgiving about this release mostly concerns its length. Disc one stretches to nearly 70 minutes, which is a demanding duration to focus on nothing but solo piano. Disc two's 47 minutes feel less like an endurance test, mainly due to the variety in tone and the emergence of more engaging textures. (However, separating the divergent styles across the discs robs the listener of potentially interesting cross-fertilisation between the approaches.) A further, minor criticism is that, considering the sophistication and elegance of the music, the cover art is ill-fitting in its cartoonish simplicity. 

I feel grateful to have been introduced to this ambitious release, one that is frustratingly broad, yet often disarmingly beautiful. Future listens will no doubt unearth greater depths.

Mining Tax – Degenerational Report EP

I won't pretend to have a particularly firm handle on what's going on in Australian politics these days, but one thing's for sure: most of what Tony Abbott and the Liberals have done to Australia since being voted in has been an utter fucking joke. (If there was ever a question of whether Abbott is snugly nestled in the pocket of the devil, there's a handy blog detailing the extensive damage Abbott has inflicted upon this country.)

Perth-based duo Mining Tax – Alex Griffin (Ermine Coat) and Mitchell Henderson-Miller – cut straight to the chase with the title of their debut EP Degenerational Report. While Mining Tax seem, on the surface, to be yet another '80s-aping outfit, more style than substance, the opposite is in fact the case: this is minimal synth-pop of a warm, incisive and intelligent stripe. Griffin's impassioned and occasionally very witty vocals are smothered by Henderson-Miller's fuzzy synths, evoking the muffled voices of the thousands of frustrated Australians who can't wait to kick Abbott out of the PM's chair next year. 

Popping this 20-minute beauty on gives me the same thrill as I got at school when the teacher would wheel out the TV and VHS player on a trolley so we could watch a documentary in class.



Degenerational Report is out now on Workplace Safety CD-Rs.

Flying Saucer Attack – Instrumentals 2015

It's hard to know what to say about this new album by Flying Saucer Attack. I first heard FSA at uni in the mid to late '90s, and they had a vague and faintly cosmic mystique unique to pre-internet bands. All you had to go on might be the album cover and a review in the NME or a mention by John Peel. Back then, FSA were a duo (David Pearce and Rachel Brook) who stirred faint beats and vocals into their mix of atmospheric languor and MBV-esque guitar-storms. Instrumentals 2015, the first FSA album in 15 years, is just Pearce, his guitar and effects.

I don't know if these pieces have been tinkered with over the years or if they were all recorded recently. The title would suggest the latter. But it doesn't really matter either way. The context is fairly meaningless. All there is is the music. And it has the same vague and faintly cosmic mystique as it had in the mid to late '90s.

There's certainly no lack of this kind of guitar-driven ambient music around. Chuck a rock and you're bound to hit someone who plays the guitar through a string of effects pedals. However, it's rare to find someone who plays the guitar in such a beguiling way. Pearce isn't reinventing the wheel, but he does create a yearning, melancholic atmosphere akin to Windy & Carl at their most minimal and forlorn.

Describing how each of these 15 pieces sound is beside the point, really; they begin and end as though they're drifting in and out of the room, making sure they colour the air without drawing too much attention to themselves. Pearce's sound is purposefully hesitant and ambiguous. Whether the individual pieces fade out after a couple of minutes or stretch on for six, seven, ten minutes, there's the sense that in leaving the music sounding unfinished, Pearce has expanded the music's horizons, leaving it open to interpretation.

Repeat listens to this album bring fresh perspectives on the music, but no definitive answers. In that regard, Instrumentals 2015 feels so open-ended that what you take away from it largely depends on what you bring to it. I started with faint fond memories of their self-titled debut album. I walk away with a nagging sensation that there's something there worth unearthing, just beyond my grasp. So I keep coming back to explore.        

A.Karperyd – Woodwork

As far as I can fathom, the motivation behind a lot of experimental electronic music is to take sounds that have obvious beauty, then manipulate them to such an extent that their heavily degraded character has an irresistible pull on our emotions. It's like hearing something with nostalgic resonance irreparably damaged by time, but still bearing some grains of its former radiance. You have to burrow through the noise, squint into the glare, let your ears fall out of focus. Something lost always seems sweeter in retrospect.

On Woodwork, Swedish artist Andreas Karperyd occasionally brings to mind the muted throb of Loscil ('Natural Nature', 'Woodwork'), the awe-inspiring grandeur of Fennesz ('Correlation and Dependence') or the recent wave of dark industrial ambient ('Low Light Conditions'). However, there's sufficient individual character – plenty of grain and craft in this Woodwork – to prevent any accusations that Karperyd's music is derivative. Indeed, according to his label Novoton, Karperyd has been releasing music since the late '80s, including a collaboration with Wire's Graham Lewis, so he's had plenty of time to evolve as an artist – which you can hear in Woodwork's lived-in atmosphere.

What makes this album worth returning to is the depth and pliability of sounds Karperyd deploys: the deeply satisfying rhythmic beds of 'Natural Nature'; the aching EBowed guitar snaking its way through 'Winter Tone'; the glimmering, light-filled tones of 'Villovagar'. The eight tracks never feel rushed or forced. These parallax soundfields take their own sweet time to flex and warp around you. 

Meg Baird – Don't Weigh Down the Light

For a couple of years I worked as a booker at a rehearsal studio cum venue, where we would host acoustic acts on a Saturday night. I soon learned there's a particular kind of acoustic music people flock out to see on a Saturday night – and it's not the kind of music I tend to enjoy. Upbeat, bluesy, rootsy stuff, with proficient musicianship and singalong bits, gets people out drinking and dancing on a Saturday night – which was my job, really – but the music itself bores me rigid. The few interesting acts I found (such as the staggering Alkali Fly), I couldn't book on a regular basis because they were too introspective, fragile and downbeat. Meg Baird's spectral folk music is in this vein. Earnest, unsullied, and occasionally very beautiful, it invites close listening and deep engagement – but can float past unheeded if you're not tuned into its subtle, autumnal flavours.

Having released four albums with psych-folk band Espers, along with two previous solo albums, Baird is a commanding singer-songwriter, projecting her compositions with conviction, while allowing a wavering vulnerability into her voice. Most of these songs are built from strong, resonant, fingerpicked acoustic guitar and Baird's high, keen vocal, with additional instrumental colour from electric guitar, organ, piano, bass and percussion played by Baird and her partner Charlie Saufley.
 
The album cover immediately brings to mind Joni Mitchell's Blue, which is a bit of a red herring – Baird looks serious and a little haunted. A closer comparison is probably Nick Drake at his most minimal and deathly (circa Pink Moon, perhaps), though Baird's compositions rarely approach Drake's in depth or complexity (whose do, really?).  

Don't Weigh Down the Light (great title) is certainly lovely, and its tone is affecting, but for the spell to be sustained over the course of an album, I can't help feeling like the songs need to spark off each other more than they do here. Or perhaps this just feels like an album from an earlier, less distracted time? 



Don't Weigh Down the Light is available from Drag City in LP, CD, mp3s and FLAC formats from 23rd June.

Jim O'Rourke – Simple Songs

There he is (I assume it's him). There's his back, anyway. He's shunning us. Or is he musing on something that lurks within the cover's inky black expanse? Either way, he's smoking a ciggie, dimly lit in red and green (is he stopping or going?). Bucket hat on. Cardigan snug. Oh Jim, you probably hate this new album already and it's only just being released...

He may be notorious for disowning his musical output, including my beloved Eureka, but I trust Jim O'Rourke. I trust that whatever musical direction he goes in – whether one-time member of Sonic Youth, collaborating with experimentalists like Oren Ambarchi, or releasing ambient drone via Bandcamp – there'll be something going on I can sink my teeth into. His Drag City releases have always been the most accessible, and Simple Songs is probably the most palatable of the lot. Exquisitely palatable, in fact.

I like the way Jim is unashamed of pulling classic '70s rock and MOR moves. Admittedly, the melodic flourishes he throws in here and there are probably tongue-in-cheek references – I'm sure I picked up some direct 'quotations' of Led Zeppelin's 'The Rain Song' and Queen's 'Don't Stop Me Now' on 'End Of The Road' – but it's all handled deftly, so it never comes across as pat. With typical O'Rourkian verve, these songs are far from simple. Knowingly absurd at times, but never resorting to cheap shots. He's too damn good for that.

On a purely sonic level, Simple Songs is delicious – and eminently crankable. Jim's spoken at length about his working process when it comes to recording acoustic instruments, and Simple Songs has the same wondrous instrumental depth as The Visitor, mixed with some of the playful Southern boogie of Insignificance. Then, when you start registering his usual wry, misanthropic lyrics, laying low in the mix to keep you guessing, the sour balances out the sweet and the whole cake slips down real smooth. The thirty-eight minutes fly by.

Straight out of the gate, 'Friends With Benefits' and 'That Weekend' are two of the most immediately satisfying vocal-led songs he's yet released. He riffs all over the shop, cramming in enough melodic ideas to fill an entire album. The Supertramp-esque 'Half Life Crisis' lays on the snark ("I can tell from your face you're a degenerative case"!) and some tasty unison guitar leads from the Thin Lizzy songbook, before 'Hotel Blue' and 'These Hands' dial back the groove for some wonderfully languid piano and pedal steel. 

There are no production tricks to generate interest; the songwriting, arrangements and dynamics hold me rapt. There's something deliciously immersive and pillowy about the way the album flows, but when Jim lets rip, you know about it. His throaty roar of "All seats are taken!" during 'Blue Hotel' sounds genuinely impassioned, and the second half of finale 'All Your Love' is basically an excuse to go full-prog on the drums – in a very precise and musical way, of course. 

It's been a six-year wait since The Visitor, so a new Jim O'Rourke solo album is a cause for celebration. Thankfully, Simple Songs is an achingly beautiful salvo from a master craftsman. No doubt this will be my favourite album of 2015 – or I'll eat Jim's bucket hat.

Simple Songs is available from Drag City in LP, CD and FLAC formats from 19th May.