Couldawouldashoulda: May 2011

Hello all and welcome to the May 2011 installment of Couldawouldashoulda, where I rattle off the five albums that just barely didn’t make the cut for my top 50 albums of 2011. You may have noticed that I neglected to make a Couldawouldashoulda for April, and this was because I had finals and put off blogging during that time. So, making up for that, here are the April Couldawouldashoulda’s described briefly using clever burger metaphors.

Earth – Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light Pt. 1

Shit that burger took FOREVER to eat. Could have used more seasoning, though. Or any condiments. Or a bun for that matter. Now that I mention I, they just basically gave me a big plate of boneless ribs. Still good though.

Nicolas Jaar – Space Is Only Noise

Listen, this is good, but I’ve been to a lot of burger joints recently that have made a similar burger much better.

The Low Anthem – Smart Flesh

Are you sure I ate this burger? It looks nice on the menu, but I don’t remember eating it. I feel full though. And a little sleepy.

Toro Y Moi – Underneath the Pine

Alright, this burger is slightly more thought out than the last one they gave me, but a dry burger’s a dry burger, dude. I’ll pass.

Within Temptation – The Unforgiving

I’m liking it, but did they have to put so much cheese on it? Why does this burger have so much cheese on it?

And that’s that. Here are the Couldawouldashoulda’s for May 2011:

Big K.R.I.T. – Return of 4Eva

Original Review Here

While still great, Return of 4Eva was hardly the masterpiece I was expecting after last year’s debut, K.R.I.T. Wuz Here. The album certainly shows K.R.I.T.’s craft maturing, but I don’t think that necessarily warrants him completely disavowing the wildly successful cheap thrills of his past like K.R.I.T. Wuz Here’s summer smash, “County Shit”. I wanted to hail Return of 4Eva as K.R.I.T.’s magnum opus as much as the next guy (and apparently every publication that has reviewed it), but I simply cannot bring myself to do it. It’s just an above average rap album.

Tim Hecker – Ravedeath, 1972

Original Review Here

In which Paul attempts to parse meaning from distant piano melodies and simmering atmospherics. Tim Hecker’s seventh album is great fun if you like to watch your own house burn down; it’s fraught with haunting ambient textures and bits of cacophony are sprinkled in like walnut pieces in grandma’s famous pumpkin bread. As a listening experience, though, Ravedeath 1972 does an excellent job of conveying terror brewing just over the horizon if not the apocalyptic undertones other critics have cited. Sometimes, the album finds itself on the wrong side of my tumultuous relationship with ambient music, but it’s worth your time nonetheless.

Thursday –No Devolución

Alright well this was going to have to come out eventually. You will not find a review of Thursday’s seventh album, No Devolución, on Check Your Mode because I forgot to take notes on it and a couple other albums. I rated them but, like a moron, I completely forgot to do anything with them. So as a primer, here are the albums I have overlooked:

The Skull Defekts – Peer Amid

Magic Pie – The Suffering Joy

Panda Bear – Tomboy (probably the most notable of the three)

Sorry about that. Anyway, No Devolución shows the New Jersey sextet (?) taking a centrist approach to their post-hardcore sound. While that’s admirable, I find myself counting far too many missed opportunities on the album as a result of this compulsion for balance. When the group goes positively apeshit in the three choruses of “Past and Furious Ruins” with distorted screams and jagged riffs, it almost feels like a fever dream, because it leaves as quickly as it arrived, the group pretending it didn’t just sonically kick you in the face as they go into the soft tumble of the verses. There aren’t nearly enough moments like that on No Devolución. While it’s a great album regardless, I would suggest the group bring out the chains and whips next time around...

Sic Alps – Napa Asylum

Original Review Here

For what should have been an unremarkable lo-fi record, Napa Asylum has had legs since its late January release. The San Francisco group’s third album is just a collection of two-minute guitar pop exercises. The chorus of “Eat Happy” literally goes, “Eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat happy,” for example and yet it is captivating in ways that will make you feel ashamed of yourself. The album’s so simple you’d almost wish it would just go away, but it has adamantly refused, and I must say it makes a rather convincing case for itself. Alright Napa Asylum, we’re cool. Just don’t drink all my Pib, OK?

Colin Stetson – New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges

Original Review Here

Pretty elaborate title for an album that’s basically a guy wrestling with a saxophone for an hour. Pretty prophetic Laurie Anderson poetry for an album that’s namesake doesn’t speak a word. Is New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges overblown? You’d think so, but it actually earns every one of its elitist signifiers because Colin Stetson can play a bass saxophone like he’s giving birth to a heaving, enchanting demon. At least with his instrument, Colin Stetson has conceived a masterpiece that warrants all the artsy bullshit that comes with it, the placental nourishment if you will for that festering brilliance kept in Stetson’s utero for what feels like centuries. These graphic birth metaphors doing anything for ya? No matter. Get this album, because, if you don’t, you may need an epidural for the pain you’ll endure for not forgiving yourself.

Couldawouldashoulda: May 2011

Sic Alps - Napa Asylum: B+

"The First White Man To Touch California Soil"

The concept of a lo-fi double album fascinates me. The idea of making a sprawling LP of scrappy garage rock tunes that only barely clock in at two minutes seems to me like the biggest musical oxymoron since The Ramones started singing about Nazis over major chords and “hey ho”’s. Napa Asylum, the third album from San Francisco group Sic Alps, has often been analogized as the garage rock Exile on Main St., and those comparisons are warranted. Napa Asylum is a surprisingly consistent collection of ramshackle love songs, and the first lo-fi album that can be safely called an “experience record.”

One might also be reminded of London Calling when I describe Napa Asylum as a sprawling record, but Sic Alps’s work on their album is far from it, in form. Where The Clash used their record space to experiment with different genres, Sic Alps strictly play simple rock songs that are most similar in style and fidelity to The Velvet Underground. Never on Napa Asylum does the group stray from that line. In fact, due to the brevity of most of the songs on the album, Sic Alps usually keep you engaged by implementing one indelible hook per track. Sometimes, it’s the annoying repetition of “eat” in “Eat Happy” or the playful guitar pull-offs in “Zeppo Epp.” It’s a risky strategy, as it would be nearly impossible to defend against arguments that claim the album’s songs are one-dimensional, but, more often than not, Napa Asylum is entertaining as it progresses in sound from acoustic to distorted to ambient to acoustic, again.

Less than a handful of Napa Asylum’s songs run over three minutes long, the first of which arrives ten tracks into the album. One would assume these few songs would be the album’s highlights, as the group would have more time to develop more than just a hook, but they are no more affecting than the rest of Napa Asylum. “The First White Man To Touch California Soil” is probably the most realized track of the bunch, even featuring a guitar solo within its ragged bluster, but “Ball of Fame,” a cute ditty in which singer, Mike Donovan, warns a girl she “better play the game,” is just as memorable, and, at just over a minute, is little more than a third of “First Man”’s track length.

Ultimately, I may enjoy the concept of Napa Asylum better than the actual music. All the album’s tunes are great, but its source material can seem overwrought at times, and the short track lengths occasionally turn promising gems into transitional missed opportunities. Still, it’s hard to complain about an album as reliable as Napa Asylum. It’s far from revolutionary, but it’s one of the most replayable lo-fi albums I’ve ever heard. I may have my qualms, but I would not mind if Sic Alps kept releasing workhorses like Napa Asylum that can keep you satisfied at a low production cost.

Sic Alps - Napa Asylum: B+