A very cool album cover, if I do say so myself. One of the coolest, I imagine.

Oryan are a self-proclaimed four piece folk/rock band from upstate New York. As a “Ryan” myself, I thought it worth sharing this band with you, a band which is helmed by Ryan Megan and Ryan Schoonmaker (there is a third Ryan in the mix, Ryan McCann, which makes one feel almost sorry for Adam Gosney, the fourth and only non “Ryan” in the band).

The lead singer Ryan Megan has a lazy, three-beers type of baritone with just enough gravel in his voice to keep things interesting. As a guy from New York (unless I have this wrong), I wondered where this heavy drawl came from. He slurs his scenes between staccato drums and fuzzy guitars, and the hints of Tom Waits are undeniable. But the songs themselves (while at times benign and others down-right offensive) benefit from an interesting bar-room country meets traditional folk blend.

I caught some faint yet pleasant Mark Eitzel undertones in lead-off track “The Ride,” and liked the partly sunny tones of “Goodbye,” as much as I disliked the disturbing “If Milbrook Got a Taco Bell.” ”Helvetica,” is another nice track which starts out like something you might hear on any old decent country rock album but quickly evolves into something else once Ryan Megan’s vocals kick in.

There are some nice guitar and drum solos throughout, and you can see how the first two Ryan’s got their start just jamming together. Not sure I would put them in league with Deer Tick or Kings of Leon, but one could see where they may fit as the evil, outlandish step-brothers perhaps.

But with occasional, unforgivable lyrics such as: “If Millbrook got a Taco Bell / all the Arabs and Jews would make out / White folks would stop being scared of the blacks / And all the queers would feel free to come out,” I can’t help but wonder if there’s a joke here and I’m just missing it.

Stream album (at your own risk).

Ryan Gosling and cohort Zach Shields have formed a band. It is called Dead Man’s Bones and their self-titled debut sounds something like Patrick Wolf on quaaludes. Or like Black Heart Procession on speed. Or both.

However, there is something interesting about a prim and proper (see The Notebook) and talented (see Fracture) actor joining forces with his long-time friend to make such a macabre, off-kilter album like this. Although I suppose he was the star in the twisted Lars and the Real Girl, so perhaps this shouldn’t be so suprising.

Much of the LP consists of sloppily played instruments arranged in catchy yet morose ways. There are the occasional up-tempo moments, but it is the eerily-choral murder ballad which serves as the album’s mantlepiece time and again.

It is the omnipresence of a zombie-like children’s choir, however, singing lines like: “Like a lamb to the slaughter, buried in water,” and “My body’s a zombie for you,” that raised my eyebrows with intrigue. It only helps to see press materials of this children’s choir dressed like an army of Charles Manson’s children going out to accost the neighborhood in their Halloween costumes (see above).

Perhaps this album represents the way Gosling remembers his time spent at the Mickey Mouse Club as a child? I would completely get it if that was the case.

Enjoy this Youtube clip, and check out their Myspace page to get a tasty preview of what should be a fairly successful debut offering.

Here are a couple of reasons why Andrew Bird deserves three or four times more respect than he thus far has received. We have our preconceptions of one man bands, guys with harmonicas rigged in front of their faces, holding accordions and guitars strapped across their backs, maybe some foot controlled drums.

But this is a different kind of one-man band. This one is a classically trained, obscure lyricist, premiere whistler and a helluva composer it seems.

Enjoy!

P.S. Apologies in advance for the advertisements. Not my doing.

Rating: 61%

Josephine, the latest offering from Magnolia Electric Co., a band who – when all pistons are firing – are quite hard to criticize, sounds more like an album they might play in the background while writing a Magnolia Electric Co. album. Jason Molina has thrown away more songs than most of his contemporaries have recorded, and may quite possibly be one of the most prolific artists making music today. But is that enough to hold this album together?

At fourteen tracks nearly identical in tempo, structure, meaning and arrangement, Josephine simply goes on for too long. We roll slowly toward the fourth track (“Shenandoah”) and can’t help but wonder whether this will be the slow and painful death it appears it might be. Our fears are realized six songs later, when “Little Sad Eyes,” uses a brush kit and a forgettable melody one too many times; even the funky organ can’t save this one from the mundane. The reimagined, previously released track, “Shiloh,” rolls by, but by this point I fear the album has already slipped between our fingers like a plume of beach sand.

Long gone are the maps of old horizons. Gone are the ghosts they used to ride around with. There are no arrows to pierce our chestnut hearts. And the black rams? All but extinct. John Henry? Nowhere in sight. This whole place used to be dark, now it’s just a dimly lit elevator to purgatory, and the elevator’s just broken down. I want my slide guitar back, Molina. I want the guest vocals, the country swagger. I want the timeless, classic, tragically perfect songs to resurface from the dust and rubble. I want to sing in the shower to a new Magnolia Electric Co. song.

The album is not without its moments, I guess. The opening track, “O! Grace,” not only scores points for including the namesake of my daughter, it’s a promising opener to the album as well; a false prophecy as it turns out, but you get the feeling there is a band at work here, even if for a fleeting moment. “Rock of Ages,” the very next track, takes us to another place and time, harkening back to the sock hops and doo-wops of yesteryear. But at 2:43, one almost wonders if this band is intentionally trying to keep their charms up their sleeves. There is a pleasant roll and drive to “The Handing Down,” where an electric guitar is allowed to come out and play alongside Molina’s crooning, pleading warble. We can feel it, and it works. Why can’t we feel things more frequently?

Molina has mentioned the importance of recording this album. It is an implied album of healing, a chance to confront the unexpected death of original bassist Evan Farrell. I only wish that import transcended the personal meaning, so that we could all lament and heal and rejoice as one. Instead, the album seems more interested in apathy and self-depreciation than with paying triumphant tribute.

While describing a bit of the album’s inspiration, Molina also promised more output in the coming months, and as he is one of my favorite artists currently making music, I will only hope the future delivers on his band’s promise to create more great tunes. Until then, I have about 150 other Molina tracks to keep on repeat. Life isn’t all that uninspired after all.

Mp3. “O! Grace”
Mp3. “The Handing Down”
Mp3. “Rock of Ages”

Caveat: It is well established that he does his guitar slides backwards, and it’s well commented on as well. Just a heads up.

As we all sit on pins and needles now that Robin Pecknold has cut his hair, trimmed his beard and abandoned his Twitter account, signs that he may have made a wise decision begin to emerge, as demonstrated by this brand new—unaccompanied—Fleet Foxes studio performance for the BBC6.

The song is tentatively called “Blue Spotted Tail,” and even on his own—without the Josh, Casey, Skylar or Christian to wash it with harmonies and echoed instrumentation—the band looks poised to deliver on last year’s promise of continued greatness.

The song itself is a calm, introspective affair, tasked more with asking questions than sharing wisdom. See “Why is life made only for to end?” or “Why in the night sky are the lights on?” as exhibit’s A and B. The way Robin moves from major to minor notes—both with his guitar and with his voice—harkens to the great folk of yesteryear, going back to Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, and Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger before them.

This is timeless music, the hardest kind to make, the best kind to hear.

Mp3. “Blue Spotted Tail”

“No Need to Light a Night Light on a Night Like Tonight”
by Snowglobe.

Mp3. “Nothing I Can Do”
Mp3. “Ms. June”

Rating: 75%

When Sharon Van Etten sings “I do,” on the second track, “For You,” from her debut LP, “Because I Was In Love,” we do not imagine altars or fresh flowers, no bridesmaids or groomsmen, no priests or witnesses. Rather, the words slip from somber lips to fill her empty bedroom. Pictures of her beloved lay spread across her sheets, spilling from an up-ended shoebox, tattered from the months spent inside her closet. A pressed rose falls from the diary she’s reading, blood red and bone dry. Mascara runs down her cheeks and the ashtray is full. Empty wine glasses line her side table to the point of falling off.

Whoever he is, he is gone, that much is clear, and we spend eleven tracks tragically learning this fact, listening to her confessions and questions over minimally forlorn arrangements. And we are somehow transfixed, because in one way or another, we have all been there. We have lost someone, whether it be a lover, a friend, a family member. We know the tragedy she issues forth song after song.

But enough hyperbole and metaphor; onto the album.

Recorded in a small studio by Greg Weeks (of the band Espers), “Because I was In Love,” is a melancholy selection of songs, comprised mostly of lazily plucked acoustic guitar with the occasional tambourine, organ, or bass as an accompaniment (never all at once, mind you), the music never truly soars.

I think what kept me hooked on this album after a few listens was her transfixing vocal delivery. I am a sucker for haunting and non-girly female singers (see Marissa Nadler, Alela Diane, Neko Case, Meg Baird), and Van Etten reaches deep inside our rib cage to tug on our heart strings in the most delicate of ways. Using words like melancholy, bittersweet, somber or forlorn to describe her, you may suspect this to be an optimist’s worst nightmare; and you would be partially right. But her melodies and sincerely emotional delivery are just so beautifully heartbreaking to hastily write off in such a fashion.

If you have the patience, Sharon Van Etten will let you glimpse inside her breaking heart, and you will feel an oneness to listen. “I’m a tornado. You are the dust you’re all around,” she sings about halfway into the album; a piece of insight that maybe it wasn’t all her lover’s fault after all.

But her blessing is her curse, as there is no sense of healing or evolution here, just an even set of songs all aimed at the same lonely mantra: “I messed up, I’m lost, and I don’t know how to fix it.” A few rays of sun, even if taunting, may go a long way to round out Van Etten’s repertoire on her sophomore offering. Time will tell.

Mp3. “For You”
Mp3. “Tornado”
Mp3. “I Wish I Knew”

Average Rating: 71.5%

(Side 1: 88%; Side 2: 55%)

Listening to Rhode Island’s own Deer Tick is like trying to eat a walnut. You have to crack through an impenetrable outer shell before enjoying the tasty part inside. Case in point: To experience the textured songwriting, the dusty melodies and earnest instrumentation, you have to get past the fact that John McCauley sounds like he’s doing a constant impersonation of Popeye the Sailor Man. This single fact may be the central reason many a listener won’t give Deer Tick a chance.

And it’s a cryin’ shame.

Because Deer Tick are — alongside bands like Bright Eyes, Modest Mouse, Band of Horses, Okkervil River and even Arcade Fire — a band defined more by their collective spirit than by the tonal quality of their lead singer. These East Coasters move effortlessly from the back porches of the Mississippi Delta complete with screen porches and  moonshine to the Texarkana saloons complete with tumbleweeds and spur-clad cowboy boots. They’re as authentic a country rock’n'roll band (with a penchant for the blues) as any you’re like to hear, which is at once the best and worst thing about their sophomore album.

Because for all its promise and potential, there’s a problem with Born On Flag Day which can’t be overlooked. A problem best described by taking you through the album, track by track. Let’s get started…

Side 1 (The Pain of Stayin’ Sober)

1. “Easy,” kicks off the album like an anthem for love-torn souls plagued with silver-lined heartbreak juxtaposed against murderous thoughts of revenge. Vintage Deer Tick, right? Dark, moody, up-tempo and unkempt. Full of spirit. I can feel McCauley’s pain, I share it with him. And I’m hooked. A good start to what could be a great album, and the song you’re most likely going to hear on the radio.

2. “Little White Lies,” follows next and starts off slow. I begin to worry whether we may have lost the tightly tuned songwriting and earnest delivery of yore. In the end I’d say this is one of the lesser songs of the front five tracks, but the change-up just past the two-minute mark grabs me by my flannel collar and throws me into the next track with a smile.

3. “Smith Hill,” is a heart-wrenching, soaring ballad which demonstrates a band coming into their own with important, memorable songs. Everything just comes together here. The peaks and valleys, the chill emotion in every word “I can drink myself to death tonight. I can stand and give a toast. To those who made it out alive, but it’s you I miss the most.”. This song might define the evolution of Deer Tick most succinctly. It’s also the song I want to listen to over and over again.

4. Hollow and barren, yet resonant for all its vacancy, “Song About a Man,” crescendos with a harmonica before retreating back into the creaky saloon where it came from. McCauley’s viewpoint comes through in the songwriting yet again: “How can a man feel anything, when all he’s ever got was sympathy?” A question I’ve never asked myself, yet it makes you wonder…

5. The guitar riff on “Houston, TX,” cascades beautifully, like a finely wrought Iron & Wine song, yet doesn’t resemble Sam Beam in any substantive way. We roll along a dirt road in a muddy pick-up and the sun’s just about to set. Everything’s all right as we ride off into the distance, with McCauley singin’ “Oh move on, oh move on.” And so we keep on moving.

Side 2 (The Joy of Gettin’ Shitcanned)

But wait, there’s still another five tracks, right? So what am I doing driving off into the sunset you ask? Damn, you caught me. It’s just that… well I wish I could stop right now, because the rest of this until-now potential-filled album doesn’t hold a bottle rocket to the first five songs. Side 2 finds a different, lesser iteration of Deer Tick in just about every fathomable way.

This is the side of Deer Tick I hoped had been purged on War Elephant. The gravely emotion is replaced by lackluster honkey tonk homage, with John McCauley vying to open for Marty Stewart and George Strait on the next big Country & Western festival circuit. Summerfest here we come!

6. “Straight Into a Storm,” is something you might dance to at your local tavern, sawdust on the dancefloor, quarter in the jukebox. The only problem is that when you finally touch boot to hardwood floor you’re surrounded by your grandparents and all their friends. They love this song, and so you start to hate it.

7. On “Friday XIII,” McCauley makes a valiant effort to add some dimension with, dare I say it, a duet? I remember when Songs:Ohia made their Magnolia Electric Co. album. Three new vocalists joined the fray, including Jenny Benford, bringing something new to Molina’s music we hadn’t heard before. The only problem here is, this song is more a demonstration in getting drunk and fooling around with your girlfriend in her mom’s bedroom than it is a song of any true note. “So let’s get back to what, all that was fair and just, oh won’t you please love me again?” they croon during the chorus, and I feel like somehow they’re pleading directly to me.

8. “The Ghost,” had me yawning from the start, and nodding off by the end. I don’t mind a sleepy ballad, but when the songwriting devolves to lines like: “Oh you don’t have to say anything. But you have got to mean everything,” you have to wonder where the McCauley of old (just a few tracks old, specifically) ran off to? He sings off key in many places here, but not in the forgiving way borne of emotional delivery. Here I’m reminded of “What Kind of Fool Am I?” and I can’t help but wince.

9. “Hell On Earth,” is easily the strongest of this batch of songs, and for me the only bright spot on the back five. They took a down-trodden narrative and pushed it somewhere noteworthy, the way “Smith Hill,” proved they could do earlier on. Despite a slightly predictable and flat structure, I liked this melody enough to stick it out a little longer.

10. Deer Tick still don’t know how to end an album it seems, as “Stung,” tries desperately to take us out with a drunken doo wop flare. McCauley almost gets me to care through the first verse, even though it’s all a bit bad karaoke and too many Zimas to my ears. When the chorus finally kicks in I realize this is the last song of the album, the last song! and I’m fighting the nagging urge to skip back to the beginning and try to forget it ended like this.

Conclusion

But there’s not enough Coors Light in all of Rhode Island to drown out the memory of four of the last five tracks. They will live on in our iTunes this Flag Day and the next one and the one after that. Things started off so well Deer Tick, but something went wrong. Can I forgive you? Of course, but not until you release your second LP later this year. Maybe you can call it Born On Labor Day, and work a little harder on crafting ten songs to match the promise of the first five here?

11. Oh, there’s also a bonus song at the end of the last track, a cover of “Goodnight Irene,” sung in what sounds to be a friend’s kitchen complete with PBR’s cracking open and laughter and screaming in the din. It’s as warm and fuzzy as it is forgettable, though it might still have been a better choice to end the album than “Stung,” was. I’m just sayin’.

Mp3. “Easier”
Mp3. “Smith Hill”

Cinematic. Somber. Tragic. Desperate. Beautiful. So ebbs this stunning track “The Motorist,” off the newest EP of the same name, from the band Arms and Sleepers.

Opening with glitchy samples, a distant screeching, and bittersweet keyboard work, we discover in layers what darkness and beauty together was always supposed to sound like. The forlorn piano emerges near the end, escaping the hectic, crashy percussion for a moment before washing away from shore, and thus washing the song’s narrative sample away with it, lost in the whispery echoes of our memory.

“Sometimes, I feel, like a motherless child.”

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