ANNA'S GHOST |
There is finally a challenger to Corn Meal Records’ Greetings from AreaCode 207 series. Cat & Mouse Records with their second yearly compilation serves notice that the label is deep with talent and well more than a one-trick, singer/songwriter-in-a-coffee-shop pony. Though full of solo artists, the songs are universally well arranged and good at asking for help from a cadre of local types that would have to be described at underground — if it’s possible for a scene small as ours to have a mainstream.
A mix of cuts from some of last year’s better releases and plenty of complete introductions, the 14-track disc represents a bona fide movement, infused with Frank Hopkins’s production, whereas Greetings has more of a Jon Wyman vibe. For some time, Wyman has garnered much of the attention pointed toward knob turners in these parts, but Hopkins has clearly established a sound and cachet that artists are drawn to, as well. If anything, his work is signed with the cursive grace of piano, strings, and horns and though he doesn’t produce all of the tracks on the Cat & Mouse record, there are plenty of likeminded folks here.
In large part, acoustic instruments reign, though some of the most traditional-sounding songs retain a digital influence. “Hell on Wheels,” the first local release from Dead Man’s Clothes, opens with a bottomed-out acoustic guitar strum full of hammer-ons, and employs such rustic sounds as knives being sharpened and a grouchy fiddle, but there in the verse is a digital bubbling up of a synthesized sound effect. It makes you pay attention just a little more to a punched-up chorus to which it’s easy to sing along. Later, on Travis Cyr’s jangly “Heavy Machines,” animatronic drums and synths refer more and more frequently to the song’s title, eventually stripping everything acoustic away and leaving only a smattering of drum sounds.
Steven Bacon loops his own guitar playing, which is impressive, to lend the sound of two guitars (listen for the picking in the right channel) to “Hard Year.” Even at nearly four minutes, it lays like a tight and focused tune, where Travis Kline’s new-country “You Don’t Change” is just a bit ragged, at 2:17. The latter does finish with a nice series of clean three-step walks down the stairs, though.
ELIZA SPRAUL |
By and large, however, this disc sounds remarkably contemporary. Anna’s Ghost open the album with ethereal sounds surrounding a swirling dark piano riff on “Businessman,” before settling into a mid-tempo down-in-the-mouth waltz. With big drawn-out operatics in the vocals, a tad off-time, it should remind of Modest Mouse or Arcade Fire, especially with the floor-tom-heavy finish. Yeah OK, fronted by Steven Williams, build from a simple drum line into a great pop tune in the Men Without Hats vein, and wind up with every bit of the melody embrace you’ll find on the I’m from Barcelona album. If Williams had a stronger voice, this tune would really shine, though he’s a plenty good songwriter. The chorus is a winner: “Don’t need you to be someone else/Don’t need convincing that you’re cool/Trust me, you ain’t got stuff to do/I love you because you’re you.”Orson Horchler babyshambles all over like Pete Doherty on “Tcgsle,” not quite yelling about a country girl, in competition with his own resonator guitar. I’m not totally sure about the mix on this one, but it’s oddly compelling, especially when Horchler apes Sting by declaring “In this life I’ll always be/Champion of cruelty” (you know, as opposed to King of Pain?). Thanksthemgmt’s “Everybody’s Bleedin’” could have easily come off the recent Golden Smog disc.
