The Devil Dogs -- Big Beef Bonanza!

The Devil Dogs

Big Beef Bonanza!

Before I begin to go into detail about this one, I’d like to say one thing...THIS is punk rock.  I’m not saying this to scold anyone who has incorrectly defined a band as being “punk rock,” but simply just to give everyone my personal opinion of a *true* punk rock album.  It’s albums like this that make me wish to hell that I could relive my punk rock days.  Big Beef Bonanza! is one that shows exactly why punk rock music gets the reception it does.  It’s most definitely not the musical ability of the players or the history that follows the band, and with lines like:

Do a little boozin’ and have a toke
I take my baby down and give her a poke.

it’s definitely not the lyrical selections that pull people into the genre.  The reason people like me love this elusive punk rock music is because it is simply fun as all hell.

The Devil Dogs were a group that formed out of New York in 1989 but were never really appreciated in the U.S..  This isn’t really all that surprising considering the punk rock movement in the States had already hit its mainstream peak in the late 70s with bands like The Ramones, The Sex Pistols and The Clash.   Despite this fact of ignorance in the U.S., The Devil Dogs hit it BIG in Europe and Japan, touring both places many times during their short-lived career (1989-1994).  Europe held a great respect for punk through the 80s and 90s (because admit it, we all know they have a better respect for music than the majority of America), which was exactly the leg up The Devil Dogs needed to expand as far as they did.  Big Beef Bonanza! (their second full length album) was a great success for the band in Europe, and was the album that truly got them their respect and recognition.  After the release of this album they began their many tours of Europe and went on to release two more full length LPs.

The reason I bring to attention Big Beef Bonanza! is because of how well it drives the listener to enjoyment.  It’s not cluttered with the anti-establishment basis of a lot of fine punk music, but instead is packed with perfectly established punk-beat tempos worked through a catchy and acceptable verse-chorus form.  There isn’t a single song on the album that you couldn’t find yourself dancing to in an enthralled stammer.  Whether it’s the clap lines in “Time Enough for Love,” the vocal driven power chords in “North Shore Bitch” and “Go On Girl,” or the ever so excellently placed 16-bar whamified guitar solo/bridge combinations in “Stay Out All Night” and “One That Got Away,” this album has something for virtually every punk listener out there.

Another excellent concept behind the album is that the band isn’t afraid to show their musical influences with the fans.  Three of the eight songs on the album are covers of other band’s music (“Time Enough for Love [by The Fun Things],” “I’m Gonna Make You Mine [by The Shadow Knights],” and “Palisades Park [by Freddy Cannon]”).  This is a defining nuance for The Devil Dogs, showing their love for the art of punk.  They aren’t afraid to tell their audience that they’re okay with filling a third of their album with unoriginal material.  They see it as a true punk band should: as an opportunity to spread their personal opinions of respect.  Saying “It’s okay if we don’t sell many records, as long as the ones we do sell drive the audience to more.”

As I said, Big Beef Bonanza! is not a product of great musical ability, but as far as the exploration of the punk genre goes, it is one of the first recommendations on my list.  Big Beef Bonanza! paints a perfect picture of what I believe punk rock truly is.  So if you feel you need to delve in TRUE punkdom, take a dive into The Devil Dogs, a gem of musical integrity and punk rock basis.

The Mars Volta -- Bedlam in Goliath

The Mars Volta

Bedlam in Goliath

Anyone who has followed bands such as Circa Survive, The Sounds of Animals Fighting or Mew, know that their sounds are anything but ordinary. The Mars Volta however brings this uniqueness to a new level of ingenuity. Collaborating together a slew of sound using strings, guitars, electronic dubs, percussion and a wide variety of wind instrumentation puts this band on a pedestal as being one of the greatest performing groups of the new era.

Being as conceptual as they are, The Mars Volta is not afraid to dabble in the ways of the untouchable. Diving into the mentality of a drug-induced coma or walking through the life of a stranger are concepts never attempted by another, and yet again the band has taken a step into unclaimed territory in the art of conceptual musicality on their newest album, The Bedlam in Goliath. The interior of the album started with an archaic ouija-type board that was purchased in Jerusalem by lead guitarist, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. The board, dubbed “The Soothsayer” was given to lead singer, Cedric Bixler-Zavala and was thereafter used as a pre-performance ritual by the band.

After numerous contacts before performances, the band started running into problems that almost led to the disbanding of The Mars Volta entirely. Their drummer, Blake Flemming, quit mid-tour; also during the tour, Bixler-Zavala needed surgery performed on his foot, resulting in him relearning to walk. As for the life of the new album, Rodriguez-Lopez's personal studio suffered many technical problems, and their album's first engineer had driven himself to madness, leaving the band with no info on the location of their masters for the new album. On the edge of the blade, Rodriguez-Lopez buried “The Soothsayer” swearing never to give away the whereabouts of it's grave. The album was thereafter completed with few issues and brought out on its newly set release date of January 29th, 2008.

The Bedlam in Goliath is almost built as a collaboration of the bands previous works with a slight reoccurrence of musicality from both Francis the Mute (2005) and De-Loused in the Comatorium (2003). An instant difference however is how the album begins. The opening track “Aberinkula,” rather than start with an ambiguously emotional crescendo blasts through your eardrums like a swift kick to the jaw. The bands new drummer, Thomas Pridgen, drives the band almost entirely with his snare throughout the whole track. Adrián Terrazas-González also isn't afraid to dive straight into his squall of a sax solo, giving the listener absolutely no time to prepare. Just by listening to this first track, you know that the entirety of this album is going to be full of some freaky shit; and that is exactly what the band prepares you for with that initial display of catastrophism (a word I have invented as of the release of this album).

Periodically throughout the album, tracks are ended twice to give the listener a feeling of ambiguity and incompleteness. The second half of these songs are slight permutations of the first half, while simultaneously adding an extra portion of eerie. A perfect example is in the song “Ilyena,” a name thought to be developed from the name, Iyanifa, the mother of destiny. Cedric Bixler-Zavala's illustrious vocal power and philharmonic dissonance entrances the listener in the second half of the song, looping the verse:

Can't spot through the lens

Bleeding through your

    sanctuary
Intention accident

Bleeding through your

                sanctuary

As this verse is drilled into the listeners mind, preparing them for the second half of the album, this banshee-like cantabile, is ever so slowly covered by an effect driven static.

The definite peak of the album is found in the track “Goliath.” Bixler-Zavala's voice is being pushed to its absolute, and as every refrain passes, Pridgen pulls the feel of articulate tempo directly towards him. Although Rodriguez-Lopez is driving the listener, he is ever slowly being pushed farther and farther by the sporadic snare of Pridgen. And just incase you didn't feel the swift kick to the jaw at the beginning of the album, the whole band comes down to almost a whisper, only to throw itself at you like a two ton hammer seconds later.

After this landmark of a track, the album comes to its only ballad, “Tourniquet Man.” The track itself acts as an interlude into what is to be expected in the second half of the album. The song structure itself chills the listener, as if asking if they want to go on, and yet again, The Mars Volta successfully keeps us pulled in.

The latter of the album is a horrific roller coaster ride looping through faint unthinkable atmospheres and once you think you finally have a grasp of the albums conceptual masterpiece, it stops dead in it's tracks. The final track, “Conjugal Burns” begins with a warped feeling of completion and invariably grows, reaching what seems to be a portrayal of torture. Curdling the blood of the listener, the last 30 seconds of the track ends mid-riff and leaves them wanting more.

With an album completely extracted from the calls of an archaic spirit board, you would think the album should only be taken in small doses, but with its consistent and strategically placed cliffhangers, it only beckons the need of the listener over and over. An amazing and well awaited addition for the fans of the band and milestone for the band itself.

Andrew Bird -- Armchair Apocrypha

Andrew Bird
Armchair Apocrypha

The purposes of these reviews are not specifically to be topical nor timely. They are, rather, to introduce artists of certain prestige that this reviewer finds it important or relevant to the proper setting. Now that I’ve made up a wordy excuse for reviewing Andrew Bird’s already one-year-old Armchair Apocrypha, I shall begin said review of Armchair Apocrypha.

Primarily a violinist (and whistler! Andrew Bird can WHISTLE!), Suzuki method-trained Bird’s songs are truly compositions, carefully constructed, though not without surprises and symphonic turns. Consistent with his other work, Armchair Apocrypha (Bird’s fifth studio album) starts slow; Bird seems to enjoy allowing the listener to ease into the album. The opening track, “Fiery Crash” is calming, in antithesis to the title’s intent. However, the album opens up with significant tension in the plucky “Imitosis,” and widens further with the meticulously constructed “Plasticities” (the only song where Bird does not overload on the lyrical imagery and reference and, also, one of the most lyrically compelling).

Nearly obscured between cautious compositions is the charming “Heretics” (question of integrity: does Bird get bored with the constant claims of “thank God it’s fatal” toward the end, or simply exhausted at the repetition from the other concerned?). In “Armchairs,” following, one must ask: is Bird being too cautious? Is he obscuring himself by his training—or is it all “intentional” façade? I suppose you could say that those questions are answered in the blasted crescendo at the end, but still: consider.

Another valid question this album raises can be found in Bird’s structuring on Armchair Apocrypha; it’s almost like a fifth grade poem structure—as learned, ABAB schematics. To clarify, Bird seems to switch back and forth between the songs that are easy to swallow—the toe tapping sound of “Heretics,” the funny “Dark Matter”—against sandwiched between the mournful “Armchairs” and the social commentary found in “Simple X.” This brings me to my primary (and really, only) complaint to be had against Andrew Bird, which could probably be best articulated to Bird himself in the phrase, “yes, Andrew, we realize that you are smarter than us.” Bird’s lyrics condemn (or propel) him to be every condescending baroque-pop, indie-snob’s wet dream. For example, in “Scythian Empire” (in it’s defense, the most beautiful track on the album), Bird sings “Scythian empire/horsemen of the Russian steppe/archers of an afterthought/routed by Samaritans/thrarted by the Thracians/kings of Macedonia and the Scythian empire.”

Come on. What? Historically accurate, yes, but the mere fact that Bird has the audacity to reference this relatively brief-lived middle-Asian empire of nomadic pre-Persians, let alone construct an elegant and driving composition as a condemnation of neo-Manifest Destiny (just one interpretation) around the Scythians automatically ostracizes a large population of music-listeners (although, hell, he did call the album Armchair Apocrypha; maybe it’s just a matter of knowing your audience). Lucky for Bird, construct he does, and well; “Scythian Empire” stands out boldly on this record.

Bird should be known for his lyricless numbers. The closing track on Armchair Apocrypha, thematically titled “Yawny at the Apocalypse” could not be named any more appropriately; simply imagine the contexts of the invitation to be a bit underwhelmed at the apocalyptic commencement—the swells of Bird’s strings fit perfectly.

Armchair Apocrypha is certainly not a front-loaded album, but there are noticeable splits; it seems there are three distinct parts that become progressively more complex and, to a point, difficult. This only accentuates Bird’s ability to construct an Album, rather than a collection of singles and fillers. Every track is impressive, if a bit undistinct at times; it takes several listens to find the differentiation and subtleties that create an Andrew Bird album.

Really, Armchair Apocrypha can be enjoyed on many different levels, and perhaps that is the entire point. Andrew Bird has created a frighteningly complex yet undeniably likable and appreciable record—it just might take a few listens to come to that appreciation.