-
neumu
Thursday, December 5, 2024 
-
-
--archival-captured-cinematronic-continuity error-daily report-datastream-depth of field--
-
--drama-44.1 khz-gramophone-inquisitive-needle drops-picture book-twinklepop--
-
Neumu = Art + Music + Words
Search Neumu:  

illustration
44.1kHz = music reviews

edited by michael goldbergcontact




Editor's note: We have activated the Neumu 44.1 kHz Archive. Use the link at the bottom of this list to access hundreds of Neumu reviews.

+ Donato Wharton - Body Isolations
+ Svalastog - Woodwork
+ Tim Hecker - Harmony In Ultraviolet
+ Rosy Parlane - Jessamine
+ Jarvis Cocker - The Jarvis Cocker Record
+ Múm - Peel Session
+ Deloris - Ten Lives
+ Minimum Chips - Lady Grey
+ Badly Drawn Boy - Born In The U.K.
+ The Hold Steady - Boys And Girls Together
+ The Blood Brothers - Young Machetes
+ The Places - Songs For Creeps
+ Camille - Le Fil
+ Wolf Eyes - Human Animal
+ Christina Carter - Electrice
+ The Decemberists - The Crane Wife
+ Junior Boys - So This Is Goodbye
+ Various Artists - Musics In The Margin
+ Rafael Toral - Space
+ Bob Dylan - Modern Times
+ Excepter - Alternation
+ Chris Thile - How To Grow A Woman From The Ground
+ Brad Mehldau - Live in Japan
+ M Ward - Post-War
+ Various Artists - Touch 25
+ The Mountain Goats - Get Lonely
+ The White Birch - Come Up For Air
+ Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out of This Country
+ Coachwhips - Double Death
+ Various Artists - Tibetan And Bhutanese Instrumental And Folk Music, Volume 2
+ Giuseppe Ielasi - Giuseppe Ielasi
+ Cex - Actual Fucking
+ Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche
+ Leafcutter John - The Forest And The Sea
+ Carla Bozulich - Evangelista
+ Barbara Morgenstern - The Grass Is Always Greener
+ Robin Guthrie - Continental
+ Peaches - Impeach My Bush
+ Oakley Hall - Second Guessing
+ Klee - Honeysuckle
+ The Court & Spark - Hearts
+ TV On The Radio - Return To Cookie Mountain
+ Awesome Color - Awesome Color
+ Jenny Wilson - Love And Youth
+ Asobi Seksu - Citrus
+ Marsen Jules - Les Fleurs
+ The Moore Brothers - Murdered By The Moore Brothers
+ Regina Spektor - Begin To Hope
+ The 1900s - Plume Delivery EP
+ Alejandro Escovedo - The Boxing Mirror
+ Function - The Secret Miracle Fountain
+ Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped
+ Loscil - Plume
+ Boris - Pink
+ Deadboy And The Elephantmen - We Are Night Sky
+ Glissandro 70 - Glissandro 70
+ Calexico - Garden Ruin (Review #2)
+ Calexico - Garden Ruin (Review #1)
+ The Flaming Lips - At War With The Mystics
+ The Glass Family - Sleep Inside This Wheel
+ Various Artists - Songs For Sixty Five Roses
+ The Fiery Furnaces - Bitter Tea
+ Motorpsycho - Black Hole/Blank Canvas
+ The Red Krayola - Introduction
+ Metal Hearts - Socialize
+ American Princes - Less And Less
+ Sondre Lerche And The Faces Down Quartet - Duper Sessions
+ Supersilent - 7
+ Band Of Horses - Everything All The Time
+ Dudley Perkins - Expressions
+ Growing - Color Wheel
+ Red Carpet - The Noise Of Red Carpet
+ The Essex Green - Cannibal Sea
+ Espers - II
+ Wilderness - Vessel States

44.1 kHz Archive



peruse archival
snippet
    
artist
The Blam
recording
Caveat Emptor
Mootron
snippet
rating


"It's not a long casual unwind," The Blam frontman Jerry Adler begins, aptly summarizing Caveat Emptor, the meaty sophomore effort from those jangly, onomatopoeia-loving New York City boys. Just 15 months ago, The Blam let loose their eponymous debut, a quirky burst of retro-tinged pop-rock.

The Blam was a confident salutation and a modest success; for Caveat Emptor, Adler and his mates shoot higher, fashioning a more ambitious album that includes — to varying effect — several dreamy ballads that attempt a hazy TV-screen flashback of "Sunday Morning"-style Velvets-sans-Nico psychodrama.

"Death or Glory" stutters the record to life with a fuzz-drenched guitar line that doesn't entirely click until it falls to the background, and a second one chimes in from above like a life raft. "The rest of it's long and unforgiving/ All right/ I've never been forgiven," Adler offers in a characteristically sly play, riding a pulsating rhythm and repetitious, kaleidoscopic guitar chords.

"Calm Down," with its cutesy raindrop octaves and kick-ass electric bridge, follows with more clever verbiage: "We gotta hand/ It to you/ We had a plan/ To fool you." Not yet six minutes in, and one thing's already clear: Caveat Emptor's as schizo as Donnie Darko. Too conventional for prog rock and too angular to be called pop, the purgatorial first part of the album sounds as if Adler's never very satisfied with the proceedings for very long, trying out different positions of a misbegotten hook to see which ones fit for final display, like a curator moving a piece up and down, left and right, this way and that.

Finally, by the third, title track, Adler finds his spot. "Caveat Emptor" drops with the lively punch of a lead guitar and backing percussion, and then come the vocals — free and easy like a fifth instrument, and in complete contrast to the underlying buyer beware moral of marriage. "Oh I've never seen this side of you," Adler belts again and again on the soaring chorus, and at once a year of seeded promise comes to glorious fruition.

In the moments on Caveat Emptor, the album, that mimic the centerpiece "Caveat Emptor," the song, all is right in this world of loud sounds come to life: "It's Not Personal," the record's anthem, is an expertly crafted pop-rock gem, replete with perfect structure, pure-poetry verses ("A near death rattle/ In a monotone line/ It's modern life/ To have and never be satisfied") and an infectious-like-Ebola melody, and the momentum bleeds right into "Writing on the Wall," with its sinister tones, overt energy and last-gasp blasts of forgotten rock 'n' roll.

Unfortunately, they're not all like that. Emptor's quieter tunes are a mixed bag: wispy, whispering "Elliott" and coy playmate "The Box Is for Me," shoot for hippie and trippy, respectively, but fail to achieve the lazy laconic charm of songs like "8546" from their debut, sounding clunky and overworked instead; an exception with hand raised, the slight and psychedelic "How Did the Flies Get In," makes the most of its floating harmonies, chirping synths and reverberated starts and stops. As a textbook closer, the spacey, expansive "Everybody" wields a mighty agenda but is shackled by its own indulgence, in spite of a gorgeous 90-second fadeout worthy of Grandaddy or Built to Spill.

Silly moniker notwithstanding, "The Blam" should serve as a proper modus operandi for the new direction of this band — both lyrically and musically, they've swapped ephemeral bus-stop whimsy for explosive, world-weary break-up stories. Jettisoned is the bouncy, charismatic naïveté that graced their fresh-faced debut, replaced here with more refined rockers and a slicker, weightier production that at its best oozes accomplishment but at worst sounds premeditated and, ultimately, somewhat predictable.

Still, it feels wrong to blame Adler for such perfunctory effects of maturation; when it works, he's a songwriter beyond reproach, and he strings together sparse, evocative stream-of-consciousness words that fit their songs well. No, if he's to be criticized for anything, it's for the ill-advised softening of his new sound through a few tenderized ballads and overwrought epics that shred some of the continuity from an otherwise cracking rock record. "I don't have a goddamn thing/ Planned out," Adler insists, yelping over a throbbing, distorted Black Rebel bass intro on the fabulously punked-out "I'm in a Panic." Here's hoping he keeps it that way.


by Noah Bonaparte




-
-snippetcontactsnippetcontributorssnippetvisionsnippethelpsnippetcopyrightsnippetlegalsnippetterms of usesnippetThis site is Copyright © 2003 Insider One LLC
-