nite nite

nite nite
How to Touch the Moon

Nashville is as good a place as any for a band to call Siouxsie Sioux as an influence. The proliferation of love for Sioux or The Cure and near-heartland geography are found buried within nite nite’s How to Touch the Moon. nite nite exemplify a new, and better, trend of modern music that channels styles from bands from nearly thirty years ago. In the simplest terms, they smartly blend old with new. That said, nite nite make moody, emotional fun. Even with the easy comparisons to darker pop music, nite nite is nevertheless catchy and accessible. It bears little baggage of the Goth label and if one were to not look at band photos it would be easy to compartmentalize How to Touch the Moon as a dance and synth-pop laced album graced with a unique lead singer – Sarah-Brooks Levine, and a band adept at mixing driving rhythms and crashing ambiance. Levine is a raspy and ghost-throated singer – she can play as much as she can howl, smile less than gnash her teeth. nite nite’s sound may appear new wave but it fits nicely along the lines of Franz Ferdinand or Class Actress, just more serious.

Brian Tucker

BEST IN SHOW by Phil Juliano

CFCF

CFCF
Continent

What’s exciting and pleasing about Continent is its capability to bridge dance music and ambience. Michael Silver, the Montreal DJ known as CFCF, has stylishly crafted an album that serves the dual purpose of dance music or something to relax to. Throughout it unfurls with energy, vibrancy - all on its own terms. Continent sounds like an artist trying to please themselves and we’re lucky to be along for the experience. The result is partly bipolar in fine glorious fashion - sultry and emotional yet patient early on about not having to give everything up for one style. It is hardly a chill album, but still lends itself to intimate encounters.

Silver draws on the eighties, from dance music to electronic game sound bites - done far from obvious, begging thoughts of where have I heard that? But references are sparse, texturing them from the eighties as much as the nineties, combing those periods to craft something relevant for the next decade. But it’s more than catchy memories. Silver is adept at dreaming up atmosphere, think of sound layering Peter Gabriel used to make music. Silver finds tribal heart in “You Hear Colours” and scratchy echoes on “Monolith”. “Raining Patterns” conjures up visuals of water drops falling all around. CFCF’s working of Fleetwood Mac’s 1987 hit “Big Love” sounds familiar to the original, feeling right at home here and reminding that the original felt more akin to the future than its late eighties birthplace. “Come Closer” is seductive, ripe for an MC and “Snake Charmer” sounds like a brilliant mid-eighties one-hit-wonder sans lyrics.

Where an artist like DJ Shadow delves into beats and copious amounts of samples the result is less about forming a music environment. CFCF succeeds at that, at building worlds and massive atmosphere with his music. At times it feels like noir-ish pop or recalls art film scores. Continent broods and jumps, moving with grace and electricity. It’s as if Vangelis detoured into synth pop territory and made scattered usage of squash beats. The whole seems an interlude between the current and the future, a world where Blade Runner may come to pass but with a lot more color.

Brian Tucker

CLASS ACTRESS

CLASS ACTRESS
Journal of Ardency

Class Actress have made pop and dance music with intelligence, and especially for those who normally may not enjoy it. For all the posturing, and the far-worse embarrassing imagery of the eighties, it’s refreshing to hear groups today echoing the better flavors from that decade. Brooklyn based Class Actress lands here, delivering Journal of Ardency, an EP that is fun, moody and eye-raising. It’s built around sensual singer Elizabeth Harper and synth music crafted from big-beat samples lifted from vinyl. Though the electro-pop heavy EP gives nods and winks to the likes of The Human League, New Order and Debbie Harry, Harper is less a pop songstress than one who accidentally comes off as one while singing sullen, sexy vocals both breathless and bated. She holds back for effect – tempting, not teasing. There’s keyboard rich songs (“Careful What You Say”, “Someone Real”) playing with squashed beats and ghostly vocals and “Let Me Take You Out”, a song that could easily be a U2 cover. Journal of Ardency is dance music for people who want to get down without having to get dirty. If Harper is aiming to be a diva then she’s the new kind, one that is less loathsome while still delivering the goods.

Journal of Ardency is out February 9 on Terrible Records and available digitally and on 10" vinyl.

Brian Tucker

MARIONETTE

Marionette
Facing You

There’s nothing temperamental or self-effacing about Marionette’s first full-length. Facing You plays out beautifully, like a thorny night of sleep interrupted by threads of a person’s bemused and amusing life. This emotional ride is supported by the album’s atypical construction where songs are built on ideas, not hooks. It’s about tempo, melody and mood. It’s is an emotional album, one that induces feeling because it’s simply drowning in music that is tangible, sonic and well-paced. Singer and drummer Kevin Cornell compliments the band, and vice-versa. There is a connection between his vocal sound and what the band is creating that is quite fitting, even as it teeters at times on pleasurable melancholy and brazen frustration – mostly as interjections and not elongated themes.

In conception and delivery Facing You is absolutely striking, heavy on driving rhythm from Marshall O’Leary’s keys to Cornell’s up-tempo drumming. It’s a world of sound, built on ambiance from varying genres. There are strong ideas built from multiple layers and textures - a gentle bell, a sound bite or a crunching guitar riff injected at just the right moment. It’s also the juxtaposing of Cornell singing and Kerri Helsley’s ethereal vocals.

‘Four Voices’ is an example of the band using straightforward melodies and uncomplicated playing - fusing them together to make one mountain of a song. It strides along and then showered with Adam Rose’s guitar and O’Leary’s lilting keys. Similar could be said of ‘Facing You’ which makes great use of horns. ‘Disappearing Act’ is tedious and creeping, graced with Helsley’s cooing vocals. ‘Orchid’ is a haunting carriage ride where Cornell sings like whispers in a hallway and Helsley gives it an icy, albeit dangerous, vocal quality. ‘All You Need’ and ‘Wavering’ give Facing You the explosion it needs – the former a driving, hectic track and the latter serving as a chant that explodes magnificently by song’s end. The album closer, ‘Over the Radio’ is epic, a fitting finale to a moving album of material. Facing You feels seamless, one that could be viewed or mistaken for one long song about the ebb and flow of emotions and sights in the mind’s eye.

Marionette plays elegantly moody and emotional music with a variety of sounds and instrumentation. The material is dreamy, textured, haunted and methodical. With Facing You the band delivers a complex album comprised of ethereal song construction and unexpected mood enhancement. Marionette bring much to the table, and seemingly never too much too handle.

Brian Tucker

LIBBY JOHNSON

Libby Johnson
Perfect View

There’s plenty of singer-songwriters trying to rise above the swarm that fill the hours at numerous coffee houses and after-dinner crowds sipping overpriced drinks. It’s a tough climb, and if the throng of loud talkers quiet down enough one gets to hear a singer with a lot to offer. With a seemingly simple, yet intrinsically far reaching vocal ability Libby Johnson does much with little. That’s not meant to detract from Johnson, but merely to highlight her strong delivery. Emotionally she digs deep with seemingly scant effort, able to tap into the heart with grace and ease, sounding like Sarah McLachlan and Gillian Welch singing the same song simultaneously.

Her voice is striking; deep in timbre yet remains smooth. For much of the album Johnson lays low, singing sincerely and with restraint, like a serious conversation or gut wrenching confession – all done with grace and ease. “Perfect View” is soft and slow and “Being Your Stranger” is reflective, descending and breathless vocals against rocky piano playing. “Be Your Revelator” is country-tinged with a little funkiness. It isn’t until “Coming Up for Air” that Johnson lets the hair down, strutting like Fiona Apple sans the guttural vocal crush. Johnson croons over slinky piano, taking her time. On “Sister You’ll Be Back Again” Johnson sings against slide guitar, making some hair raising acoustic music. But on the spare acoustic “I Know You Know” Johnson seems to bare the most.

With Perfect View Johnson is somewhere between singer-songwriter and caregiver - her voice warm, soothing and at times angelic. For a musician who’s performed at CBGB’s and seen her music used in film (Trust the Man) it’s evident her qualities as a singer translate beyond the norm.

Brian Tucker

THE LIONS RAMPANT

THE LIONS RAMPANT
It’s Fun to do Bad Things (2010)

It’s been far too long between Lions Rampant albums. It’s good to know that a band out there still gives a damn about having a good time, getting fucked up and playing great rock and roll music sans pretension and corniness. The Burlington, Kentucky band fires on all cylinders, doing what the music world really needs - stimulation and liveliness, music that makes you feel alive, like a kid downing a handful of sodas the first time. Their album It’s Fun to do Bad Things is a non-stop party, meant to be played loud as a dirty concoction of neo-soul crashing head on with brazen old school rock music when guitars were plugged in and played as is. It’s a rush - a head shaking, hip quaking explosion laced with delicious grooves that drags feet to the dance floor.

Judging by the intensity of It’s Fun to do Bad Things their self-propelled gnarly party never stopped between 2006’s Play Rock n Roll and 2007’s Freedom. It’s Fun sounds authentic, as if recorded at a house party with the partygoers and noise removed. The recording sounds bare but comes off monstrous, like an old record found in your parents stash. Its simplicity, its knock-down-drag-out bare knuckled delivery, is akin to the rawness employed on recent albums by The Love Language or The Diamond Center. It’s Fun sounds recorded with guns to the band’s heads - it’s fast, soulful and blows mercury out the thermometer. They fuse blues and punk through a sixties metallic filter, its heavy grooves are brash, hypnotic and fun. Think The Isley Brothers by way of The Standells and the J. Geils Band. It’s hard to point to specific tracks as gems because the whole album is fucking great. ‘I’m a Riot’ and “Cocaine Anne’ are choice listens, but there’s not a single bad song on the album. It’s Fun to do Bad Things is one of the best party records in years. Buy it, download it, invite your friends over and play it loud. Warn your neighbors.

Brian Tucker