Three Imaginary Girls - Seattle's sparkly indie-pop press

Lost in Light Rotation

Imaginary Courtney — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:31:12 +0000

9.1

http://www.magicmarkerrecords.com/

My love for them has been a combination of sheer adoration and joy coupled with a nervousness that I was missing the joke -- maybe I too, in the words of the album's title track "Lost in Light Rotation," never took the time to learn the slang that we speak or the slogans on the t-shirts. Yet when the message is all wrapped up in harmonies and power chords, I forget my fear for love of bouncing and singing along.

Tullycraft’s vision of twee was something both sweet and cynical, a cuteness belied with dirty jokes, and both obscure references and snide comments about other bands. Don’t you dare try to tell me they’re all about ukuleles and bunny rabbits and cuddly wuddly love songs! The hearts in their songs are often broken, the best times have already past, and computers don’t even exist as a way to keep in touch with friends.

The band is fronted by a bass player who finds four strings too cumbersome, and two handsome guitarists who blend jangle (Chris Munford) and angle (Corianton Hale) while singing backup vocals. Now that Tullycraft has elevated Jenny Mears to belting out entire verses, I’m happily reminded of some of the greatest Fastbacks moments when the band goes into power-pop mode. While their last album, 2007’s Every Scene Needs a Center, mostly stumbled through a number of monster metaphors, Lost in Light Rotation is a clear celebration of romantic attempts at reinvention, insecurity and optimism wrapped up in cheerful and catchy sounds.

The joy of self-transformation fused with the anxiety of fitting in on "Queenie Co." hits sharply to someone who has lived in 5 cities in 10 years. When Jenny and Sean alternately sing I love my music and I’m tired of all my fake friends it is the realization of someone moving to a new town after she fell in love with a perfect sound. When I hear this, I’m guilty as charged.

The first single and title track, "Lost in Light Rotation," continues to analyze music obsessives, those who might trade the myth for the truth and tend to overrate. The longevity of Tullycraft leaves a hundred bands that may have inspired "No Tic All Tac": like their classic single "Josie", here we have another tale of a girl group gone wrong. Josie appears again, at least in name, in the next song "Dig Up the Graves". I dream of hearing this song going out over tens of thousands of festivalgoers, even when it might be about those bands that are revived to play such festivals.

I live in slight fear that every Tullycraft album might be their last one. Yet when another review mistakenly says it’s been a decade since their formation (fact: it's been almost two!) I understand just how confusing this band is to other people. You either love them or you won’t, but every album seems to be less intimidating to introduce to other people. Now that online streaming has separated much of the myth of bands from the music, nothing is stopping you for taking my word that this is an excellent album: a great starting point for the uninitiated, a cheerful revival for the old guard. While the rest of the indie pop world plugs in samplers or turns up the reverb, Lost in Light Rotation gives Tullycraft lovers new and old something to reminisce over, and root for.

Tullycraft's first single came out when I was fifteen. Played heavily on WPRB Princeton, "Pop Songs Your New Boyfriend's Too Stupid To Know About" was the start of MY long and damning relationship with indie pop. Yet, like the boy in that 1995 single, Tullycraft has made me worry I was too stupid to know about the bands they were singing about. My love for them has been a combination of sheer adoration and joy coupled with a nervousness that I was missing the joke -- maybe I too, in the words of the album's title track "Lost in Light Rotation," never took the time to learn the slang that we speak or the slogans on the t-shirts. Yet when the message is all wrapped up in harmonies and power chords, I forget my fear for love of bouncing and singing along.

Ghetto Moon

Chris Estey — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:17:28 +0000

8.5

http://www.riotactmedia.com/artists/solvents.php

This is Solvents' least stylistically ambitious release -- and that is a very good thing. The band hasn't gone purely minimalistic in working with Karl Blau for one day in his Anacortes studio; the absolutely luscious violin of Emily Madden honey-drips upon her husband Jarrod Bramson's salty sighed-vocals in a way that could never be described as overly restrained. But the duo are sounding gingerly tight and scrupulously aware of their best qualities in the seven songs that make up Ghetto Moon, and every song could be a gentle giant hit. They've left the cut-and-paste scruff of oblique fanzine rock for cafe troubadour waltz, august vocal melodies partnered with bardic elucidation. And yet not without coy humor ("I'm so obscure, and bitter cool, and long to come undone").

The Port Townsend, WA creator-couple have released, over time, a flurry of diverse-sounding cassettes and CDs and Internet-mixes, and their last planned full-length, the appreciated forgive yr. blood, showed they could be a lo-fi Basement Tapes jukebox of styles. Ghetto Moon is much different: it's all stately-gorgeous, if denuded to Jarrod's mellifluous lead vocals and Emily's complimentary harmonies, truly deeply sung melodies that are going to stick with you as much as her lovely fiddling.

In pleads like "Are You Gonna Wait For Love To Leave You?" and mileu observations like "Blaine St. Song," there's a lot of pining against nostalgia here, and love as sacrifice, and being "tired of living on your knees." Frankly, it doesn't sound like anyone's going anywhere fast in these songs, because they're sung and played by a couple who sound like their work will be reissued in deluxe packages every several years (so you hope it's not autobio). "Fuck open mic, let's go look at the stars," is how the whole thing begins on the most pop-sounding gem, "Don't Expect To Find Love." Albums made thirty years ago would be all about these kids getting the hell out of Dodge, but we've come to the end of the world in the Pacific NW, as Robert Anton Wilson once said about the region, where east has nowhere else to go and you might as well stay in a tourist-trap and play out the rest in house shows and washing dishes for a collective and staying under the radar from various avenging modern arch-angels. These are the grand-kids of Blood On The Tracks, the neo-gypsy sons and daughters of slaves traded in miles trod by imported Spanish boot leather. And in the happy quick visible breaths of near-kisses outside the club, there's reason to stick around. For now.

Please buy this if the Decemberists have gotten too Moog-musical theater for you, if The Shins seem to have crespecularly curled into an insular ball shaking tiny angry fists at those who have made them successful, or if you wish that Phil Ochs had made a love-affair album between his raging political broadsides and mystical art-folk. Billy Bragg did an album a little like this once, Workers Playtime, about boys and girls and Valentine's Day gone awry and people asking "What's up with him?" when he left the room, and it's my most cherished of his. Even scarved soldiers at the food bank and house-bound activists publishing poetry and vegan restaurant workers need to hum about "waiting for my girl" ("Golden Chains"), and they've never had a better new record to do that with than Ghetto Moon.

Lines We Trace

imaginary victoria — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:42:30 +0000

8.3

http://www.heymarseilles.com/

HM-LWT_COVER_HI-RES.jpg

Lines We Trace opens up suddenly, with all kinds of ache laced through the echoes of a well-worn Andrew Bird album, cut beautifully with strains of Matt Bishop's unmistakable vocals. It's a powerful track ("Tides"), the line I would trade ten thousand days / for one more hour with you immediately vaulting the listener into a pile of Polaroids, to sift through the sweet nostalgia of every relationship they ever had that didn't quite work out. As sudden as the physical start of this album is the realization that Hey Marseilles has matured, with a new depth to their composition, yet with that familiar I'm-telling-this-story-right-to-your-soul songwriting that we've come to know and love.

For those who have gotten by these last few years on live shows, the occasional single release, and 2008's To Travels and Trunks; Lines We Trace is the equivalent of a new apartment in a town you love: you know the roads around it like the back of your hand, but you've never seen the sunlight through the windowpanes quite like this. Everything that's wonderful and familiar about Hey Marseilles is present -- a profound earnestness, those unmistakable chord progressions, the orchestral swells and pitches -- but delivered with new perspective, more wisdom, and perhaps the sight of a first laugh line in the bathroom mirror.

Simply stated, longstanding fans of the band and new listeners alike will welcome this addition to their library with open arms. Standout tracks "Bright Stars Burning" (the album's single) and "Looking Back" are decidedly Northwest, with scattered time signatures and a layered, big-room sound; "Madrona" takes the gazing-out-the-train-window-soundtrack game to a whole new level. Beautiful remasters of 2011's release ("Elegy" and "Cafe Lights") are embedded nicely at mid- and late-points throughout the album, akin to hearing a longstanding favorite at perfect points in a live set.

There's a lot to discover here, and you'll find your own words for it soon enough: Lines We Trace officially drops on March 5th, and is available for preorder everywhere today. On the live front, Hey Marseilles will be celebrating with a tour that runs across the country and back from the end of February to mid-April. The band will be making a stop at our own Showbox on March 1st with Y La Bamba and Pollens {tickets available here}.

Bang Up

Imaginary Karen — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 17:21:40 +0000

7.8

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/teacozies1

tea_cozies_bang_up.jpg

Here is some fantastic news to brighten any grey Seattle Fall day -- our favorite garage-surf rockers the Tea Cozies are releasing a new EP on October 30! I don’t think I have stopped randomly breaking into “sha lalalala”-style choruses since their last album Hot Probs dropped. Their latest effort, titled Bang Up, is a five-song feel-good funhouse that’s filled with three-chord riffs and dreamy pop vocals.

Bang Up was recorded over the summer and features the Tea Cozies’ distinct brand of 60’s girl group harmonies blended with effervescent surf pop rhythms. Briefly venturing into the darker reaches on “Cosmic Osmo,” you get a taste of their more rough edge capabilities and quirkier sound. But it doesn’t last long: they quickly take you back to dreamland in the closing track “Silhouette in a Suitcase,” which catapaulted me straight to the days of Veruca Salt and Blur.

The highlight is “Muchos Dracula,” a wonderfully retro-spooky monster ode reminiscent of The Munsters theme song and Creature From the Black Lagoon. Not to mention, it’s bloody perfect for Halloween! All in all, the Tea Cozies didn’t stray far from the familiar, but instead work on perfecting what they already know. And that’s okay by me because heck, it had me skipping down the street.

Don’t miss their special EP release show this Saturday 10/27 at the Columbia City Theater. It’s the perfect reason to give your Halloween costume a test drive and give our local musicians some love!

{21+/ 9pm / $7 adv, $10 door. With Kithkin, Erik Blood, Charms.}

Moms

John in Ballard — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 15:14:55 +0000

8.2

http://www.barsuk.com/shop/bark131?

Menomena-Moms-608x608.jpg

For their fifth full-length album, Moms, Portland’s Menomena underwent a significant lineup change: front man and multi-instrumentalist Brent Knopf left the group in January of 2011 to focus on his own project, Ramona Falls. Thankfully, the remaining members of the band -- bassist and saxophonist Justin Harris and drummer Danny Seim -- are not short on talent in their own right. Friends since high school, the pair simply kept the band together as a two-piece, and the result is an album that proves to be Menomena’s most lyrically intense and earnest work yet, and also one of their best.

While the sound of the band occasionally argued and feuded as a three-piece, now that they are down to two, the decision making process has been refined and by all accounts, it appears as though the recording of Moms was very collaborative and productive. The songwriting and singing duties for the ten tracks are now split evenly between the two members; with Harris and Seim taking the lead singing role on five tracks each, even alternating back and forth from track to track.

The most striking development on Moms is the straightforward (and at times downright dark) lyrical moments on the album, which is often seemingly directed at their upbringing and family dynamic. Seim’s mother died when he was young, and Harris was raised by his mother after his Vietnam-veteran father walked out on the family when he was still a teenager. A strong example is this line from the Harris sung “Pique”, where he sings: Now I’m a failure / cursed with male genitalia / a parasitic fuck / with no clue as to what men do / impossible to love. On “Heavy Is As Heavy Does” Harris touches on a multitude of topics including family (Heavy are the branches / hanging from my fucked up family tree), religion (I’m not one for religion / but I can’t seem to shake this imagery) and relationships (Among six billion people / I want the ones who never wanted me).

Lyrical content isn’t the only area of Menomena's growth and development on Moms, as the band also explores new territory musically. The album features much of the same catchy bass lines, tight drumming rhythms, and flourishes of piano and saxophone that fans of the band will recognize and love. New to the instrumental fold, however, is the use of a flute, which appears on three different tracks on the album; and “One Horse”, the album’s eight-plus minute long slow-burning closing track, features cello, Wurlitzer, and viola, all of which round out the symphonic appeal.

All in all, Moms is a rewarding album for fans and new listeners alike. After all the years and the turmoil the band has been through, it's refreshing to see that they've not only made it out in one piece, but they're still putting out provocative and engaging albums. You can experience Menomena live, in all their glory, as they finish up the U.S. leg of their North American fall tour with a stop in Seattle at Showbox at the Market, on Friday October 26^th.