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Fonda: Sequence Dream

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Fonda - Sequence Dream

 

Ever have it happen that you dismiss a band as “not my thing” for a while, then, one day, you hear a song that makes things click? “Oh, I get it now!” you say.

I had that moment today with the band Fonda and a new single they released in late November (on Minty Fresh), “Sequence Dream”. There’s something about its sweep of dream pop, the layers of diaphanous vocals and gossamer keys and guitar, that sits perfectly here in the early winter days. It’s music for sitting by a window with a hot cuppa and being self-indulgently melancholy.

 

 

The b-side, “Another New Year’s Eve”, is, as you would expect from the title, custom-made for wallowing in holiday heartbreak.

Fonda, if you didn’t know, have been recording since the late ’90s, just released their most recent album, Sell Your Memories, last February, and already have a new album in the works.

 

Fonda Official Website
Fonda @ Twitter
Fonda @ Facebook

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Milan Jay, How Well Do You Remember Dying

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Milan Jay (John Millane and Joseph Kenny) have spent the better part of the last year and a half (or so) holed up in a small town in the west of Ireland working on a new record. How Well Do You Remember Dying is the first single; the full record is expected in 2014.

Despite the name, the song is not about literal death or actual resurrection; rather, it is a hard-edged meditation on burning your life down and starting over. It might not be the life you expected, or the life you had planned. It is the life you chose.

 

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Three Songs From: Wax Fang

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True confession: The first time I listened to Wax Fang’s tunes, it was totally because I had to find out what kind of noises a band called “Wax Fang” was going to make. I was expecting them to be either gothy and overwrought or possibly gothy and making-sly-commentary-on-subcultural-ridiculousness.

What I found is that they are neither of those things. The best way I can think of to describe it, after listening to their three new stand-alone singles, is to say they are masters of building tiny rock ‘n roll universes.

Here are the songs. Each one contains a fully formed world, built out of bold guitars and augmented by piano, strings and steady drums.

The Blonde Leading the Blonde: The opening riff is the one that hooked me and drew me in, but the whole song serves as an introduction to the depth and verve of their sound.
 

 
Hearts Are Made for Beating: A meditation on how sometimes love is a bomb that goes off in your chest. Goes well with walking around the city alone on a dark, cold night.
 

 
King of the Kingdom of Man: One minute you’re rolling along, doing the grocery shopping, thinking casual thoughts about how many eggs you might need for poundcake, and the next you have been caught in an undertow of feelings and are on your way out to sea where “out to sea” means “suddenly verklempt in the dairy section because of a fictional character.” It’s also the one where every time it starts up I think Ziggy Stardust? Is that you?
 

 

For their next trick, they’re making a space opera. I am not making this up. It’s called The Astronaut and if you’re an American Dad! viewer you heard a big chunk of it during the 150th episode. For the rest of you, be prepared to appreciate the complete work when it arrives in mid-January.

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Mumblr, White Jesus/Black God

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Mumblr is: Nick Morrison (vocals, guitar), Scott Stitzer (drums), Ian Amidon (guitar) and Sean Reilly (bass), and they are from North Philadelphia. White Jesus/Black God is their first record.

They have made up their own genre – fuzz punk – which at first I thought might be a new way to say grunge, but no, this is definitely fuzzed out and distorted punk rock. It is gloriously obnoxious and exactly what I needed after several weeks of floating in a dream pop / electronica haze. Here are three tunes I especially liked:

Holy Ghost: This may be the most aggressive song about making out and grammar arguments that you will listen to today.
 

 
Puke: The first 20 seconds of this song sound like a rock n’ roll accident, like someone swung a wrecking ball into the middle of the band and knocked everyone into the speakers and amps. The rest of it sounds like they all managed to stand up and find their guitar picks and drumsticks and sing a song about being really angry at someone and not quite knowing why.
 

 
Good Cop, Dad Cop: I picked this one mainly because I’m amused/impressed that they managed to wedge the phrase “fornication magazine” into the lyrics and have it not sound clunky.
 

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Introducing: Blitz//Berlin

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Blitz//Berlin are Martin, Casey, Dean and Tristan, from Toronto, Canada. Martin sings, they all play multiple instruments, and several of them have beards. They grew up on punk shows and sci-fi movies and when not rocking out, make scores for independent films.

They have recently released a three song mixtape, which you can listen to at Soundcloud and then download for free here.

All three songs are quite good; I picked Outside to share because of a lyric that reached out and hooked me: There’s a barroom in the belly of the war machine / and they’re serving cheap American beer all night / There’s a bedroom in the bottom of the sinking ship / it’s where I love you where I love you where I love you on the outside. As soon as I heard it I wanted to know the rest of that story. Also, I love the surging, driving beat.
 

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Greenhouse, The Last Shred of Night

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Greenhouse is Ryan Torres (drums, synths, guitars) and Rex Hudson (bass, synths, guitars) and they are from Denton, Texas. The Last Shred of Night is their second record.

It is a very long record – twenty-nine songs! – but this is, surprisingly, neither oppressive nor tedious, mainly because it is the kind of electronica that I think of as “companionable.” It’s good to put on while working on other things, because it’s complex and interesting enough to occupy a restless mind, but unlikely to cause a distracting dance party.

Also, they have the very best song titles. Reading the track list feels like a cross between skimming titles in a short story anthology and eavesdropping on text messages between friends.

Here are some examples:

 

 

 

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Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones, Long Time Gone

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File this under: unlikely musical collaborations. Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day) and Norah Jones have teamed up to make Foreverly, which is complete reinterpretation of the Everly Brothers’ Songs Our Daddy Taught Us (1958). The results, so far, are unexpectedly sweet.

Here they are with Long Time Gone:
 

 

The rest of the record is set to emerge on November 25th, 2013.

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The Architects, Border Wars Vol. 1

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Border_Wars_Book_Cover

Border Wars by The Architects, is, or will be, a concept album in five parts. Each part will contain both a comic book and a record, intended to be experienced simultaneously.

Volume 1, the comic, written by Brandon Phillips, lead singer for The Architects, and magnificently illustrated by Mallory Dorn, is the start of a dense, dark and bloody story of life along the Texas/Mexico border, full of interesting characters, including but not limited to: an inmate on death row who shares hints of a complicated past; a duplicitous, murderous reality-tv-star sheriff; a mega-church pastor and his estranged son; and a mysterious girl whose appearance – naked and half-dead – adds fuel to the narrative.

Volume 1, the record by the Architects, illustrates the same story in a different but complimentary and congruent way. The bruised jewel-tones and thick black lines of the comic are echoed by the bright brash punkabilly guitars; the lyrics allow the listener to get an idea of the character of the broad outer world of the comic while also illuminating the inner world of individual characters.

Also, while we here at NTSIB vigorously resist falling into the “sounds like” trap, I have to tell you, it would be reasonable to make comparisons to both Born in the USA-era Springsteen and early ’90s Social Distortion. The world may be different – this place The Architects and Mallory Dorn have brought to life is Darlington County if Darlington County was run by Walter White and Jesse was driving around listening to Ball and Chain – but the raw propulsive power and deft compression of a big, complicated story into only a few lines are the same.

Below is Volume 1, in its entirety. All of the songs are strong, but I particularly enjoy Lucky, Heartbreaker and I Chose Wrong. And by “enjoy” I mean “would happily listen to them on a little loop multiple times in a row.”
 

 

Volume 2 is currently in pre-order. Meanwhile, The Architects are hitting the road. New York, your show is November 19th at the Knitting Factory; everyone else, check their dates and make your plans accordingly.

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Jus Post Bellum, Oh July

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Jus Post Bellum (Justice After War) are Geoffrey Wilson (lead vocals, guitar), Hannah Jensen (vocals), Zach Dunham (drums, percussion, vocals), and Daniel Bieber (bass, cello, vocals), and they are from Brooklyn, via Minnesota and upstate New York.

Oh July is their second record, and it is some of the freshest and most lovely folk music I’ve heard for a while.

Their sound is traditional, and American, and intended to evoke the period after the Civil War. What distinguishes them from a million bands with the same idea is that they incorporate elements of a kind of folk music not often heard in folk-pop – spirituals – and that their old-timey concept is leavened with a distinctly modern sensibility.

Exhibits A and B: Gimme That Gun and Call to My Jesus. The former is the first song on the record, and is spellbinding live. The latter comes in the middle, and pinned me to my chair the first time I heard it.
 

 

 
And then there is Measure of a Man, which drifts closer to “pop” than “folk”, and is my favorite, because of lines like I’m lost / I’m a wildfire burnin’/ I’m a voice in the Devil’s chorus / I’m a dog / I’m a sleepy morning / I’m love / and I’m coming without warning:
 

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Gary Numan, Splinter (Songs From A Broken Mind)

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There are times when I wish I could transmit the experience of listening to body of music for the first time whole and complete and unfiltered, so that y’all could experience it just as I did.

Because if I could, all of you would be able to stand with me on the subway platform on a crisp cold sunny morning, half-asleep and surrounded by other commuters, while the initial notes of I Am Dust, the first song from Splinter (Songs from a Broken Mind) by Gary Numan rolled over us like a grimy tide coming in. They’re darkly seductive and a little bit intoxicating, like heavy sweet aural smoke.

And perhaps, as I did, you all would smile into your scarves and let the dark tide pull you under.
 

 

Here’s what I think about Splinter, now that I’ve listened to it a few times: it is a dark, dense, contemplative record, rigorously constructed and at times a little chilly. A candle-lit cathedral with broken windows. It is gloomy, but pleasingly so.

And while the slower songs – and there are several – are lovely, the places where the lights that shine most brightly through the gloom are the club bangers, like Love Hurt Bleed:
 

Gary Numan - Love Hurt Bleed

 

Note: there is a remix competition going on for Love Hurt Bleed through November 25, 2013. Get on that, producers in the audience!