Kill Verona “Trauma” Livewire
Records
With intense, driving guitars and emotional vocal delivery, Kill
Verona’s new EP “Trauma” is a true gem in its
genre. It is emo-rock, reminiscent of the early Get Up Kids,
with an updated sound in the vein of Thursday and the Deftones. The
polished but not perfect production quality makes the record
listenable without being too overproduced.
This EP captures the rawness of pure rock but combines it with a
dark intensity and melodic lyrics, making it catchy but not
poppy. Kill Verona has a unique sound that stands out above
other bands by tweaking their genre without breaking or stepping
too far outside of it. This new twist in emo-rock has been done
before, but Kill Verona takes it to another level beyond what is
already accomplished.
Kill Verona’s EP “Trauma” on Livewire Records
is emotional without being whiny and hard without being abrasive.
This delicate balance is a difficult find, and this is displayed on
“Trauma,” which could make Kill Verona a successful
independent band. Â
-By Vasiliki Marras
Bad Religion “The Empire Strikes First”
Epitaph
Anthems and extremely fast punk songs have characterized every Bad
Religion album to date, and the band’s new release,
“The Empire Strikes First,” is no exception. With
strong political overtones and scathing social commentary,
“The Empire Strikes First” is quite possibly the best
release from the most articulate punk rock band of the last two
decades.
The album begins with an eerie intro of guitar, keyboard and
drums, and builds into the AFI-esque “Sinister Rouge,”
a guitar-driven, fast-paced song with an operatic chorus layered
throughout. Next on the album is “Social Suicide,” 1
minute and 33 seconds of blaring, high-energy “old
school” punk, with the band abandoning the super- clean
guitar riffs for one track.
In the title song “The Empire Strikes First,” singer
Greg Graffin holds nothing back in criticizing the current
government. The chorus ““ “Don’t want to live,
don’t want to give, don’t want to be an
E-M-P-I-R-E” ““ makes the liberal views of the band
quite obvious.
The “Los Angeles is Burning” track already has been
receiving some radio airplay, which is not surprising considering
its hooks and Graffin’s distinct and almost relaxing timbre.
With the high production quality, there likely will be more radio
play for “The Empire Strikes First.” Â
The melodic guitars and upbeat tempos make the songs on
“The Empire Strikes First” contagiously catchy, and the
production quality is a little too perfect for punk rock. Despite
this shortcoming, Bad Religion has put together an energetic,
intelligent and listenable album that surely will catch the
attention of many people, both political leftists and punk
aficionados.
-By Vasiliki Marras
Sonic Youth “Sonic Nurse”
Geffen
For many, Sonic Youth has always been the band to watch. The modern
era’s Velvet Underground, the band achieved critical and
commercial success and helped start the alternative rock movement
of the early 1990s. Though many of its peers have since broken up
(the Pixies, despite their recent reunion tour) or stopped pushing
their music forward (see Yo La Tengo’s plodding “Summer
Sun”), Sonic Youth has remained powerfully relevant if not
remarkably consistent. “Sonic Nurse,” its second great
album in a row, is a confident display of its trademark discordant
guitars and skewed pop sensibilities.
New member Jim O’Rourke’s contributions to the album
are unclear (on its Web site he is credited with “good
times”), though the backbeat of opener “New
Hampshire” is nearly identical to the O’Rourke-produced
“Spiders (Kidsmoke)” by Wilco. Perhaps his greatest
addition to the band has been reining in the band’s
experimentalism enough for it to produce another set of tight rock
songs. Darker and murkier than 2002’s “Murray
Street,” “Sonic Nurse” hearkens back to the days
of classics “Daydream Nation” and
“Goo.”
Thurston Moore’s guitar-god status never has been
questioned, and squealing bursts of feedback rage alongside cleanly
picked guitar lines in tracks like “Dripping Dream” and
the raucous “Pattern Recognition.” Kim Gordon remains
one of indie rock’s spookiest vocalists, and “I Love
You Golden Blue” is a bizarre, cinematic song that opens with
two minutes of noise before the band and Gordon’s hushed
voice emerges. The female bassist takes on several of the wilder
tracks with her punk rock vamp, including “Pattern
Recognition” and “Mariah Carey and The Arthur Doyle
Hand Creme,” a song about the pop diva’s recent
meltdown whose message would be clear even without lyrics like,
“Hey, hey little baby, break down. But nothing, you come
undone. Hey, hey little baby, get down before you fall and hurt
someone.” Clocking in at just over an hour, the 10 songs of
“Sonic Nurse” are given plenty of room to stretch, with
the faster tracks interspersed with mid-tempo droners like
“Peace Attack” and “Paper Cup Exit.”
With “Sonic Nurse,” Sonic Youth delivers a strong,
consistent record. Well crafted, eerie and exciting, the band seems
to have find its stride again. “I don’t mind if you
sing a different song, sing a different song, just as long as you
sing, sing along,” Moore croons on “Paper Cup
Exit” just before ominously singing in a whisper, “New
ears are listening.” Sixteen years after the release of the
landmark “Daydream Nation,” he may be right.
-By David Greenwald
Animal Collective “Sung Tongs” Fat
Cat
“Ah-ah-ah-ah-he-ah-ah-ah-ah!” So begins Animal
Collective’s stunning “Sung Tongs,” a work of a
kaleidoscopic spectrum that overflows with sound. A sort of
controlled chaos, the album is structured but unpredictable,
focused but constantly on the verge of spiraling into anarchy. The
style of Animal Collective is similarly hard to pinpoint.
Everything from the Beach Boys’ vocal harmonies to influences
like African tribal rhythms and lo-fi folk guitars goes into the
jumble of music that is “Sung Tongs.” Making sense of
the layers upon layers of the album requires multiple listens and a
sense of humor.
“Sung Tongs” is no hyperproduced masterpiece á
la Radiohead’s “OK Computer.” The songs have a
barely contained energy and joy to them, with many changing course
after the opening minutes as if they’ve already lost interest
in the initial idea. The wordless “Winter’s
Love,” for instance, ambles along with a Simon &
Garfunkel-like melody for its first minute or so, accompanied by
roughly recorded percussion. The song turns into a campfire song
with African-tinged drumming. Rhythm is an integral part of the
album, and no traditional drum kits make appearances on “Sung
Tongs.” Instead, they’ve been replaced by everything
from marching band drums to tambourines to bongos. An acoustic
guitar is strummed throughout the album and sits ““
low-fidelity fuzz and all ““ right at the top of the mix.
Layers of crystal-clear vocals dance around each other over
rumbling percussion and, on the end of “Who Could Win A
Rabbit,” gently mewing animals. “The Softest
Voice” is the closest thing to a traditional song of any
kind, layering plucked acoustic guitars like sheets around waves of
the ebbing and flowing voices of the title.
One of the strengths of “Sung Tongs” is its ability
to merge gorgeously recorded vocals and instruments with percussion
and rhythm guitars right out of a basement or field recording,
leaving you unsure if you’re entering a cathedral or watching
a documentary on the Discovery Channel. The dichotomy of the
natural and technological works well with the album’s
ever-shifting songs, creating yet another element of confusion. The
crystalline vocals are often buried deep within the murk, bringing
to mind another album full of change and new sounds. Like My Bloody
Valentine’s “Loveless” before it, “Sung
Tongs” is so good that it might just be the album that kills
an entire genre. That is, if such a genre even exists.
-By David Greenwald