4Play/Glasvegas, Papercuts, Crippled Black Phoenix, The Airborne Toxic Event

May 31, 2009

4Play/Glasvegas,Papercuts, Crippled Black Phoenix, The Airborne Toxic Event
Kristi Kates 6/1/09

Glasvegas - Glasvegas - Sony
Scottish accents, heartfelt lyrics, and what critics are terming “real” rock n’ roll (ie rock music recorded live in a studio, as opposed to crafted from samples on a notebook computer) are the hallmarks of Glasgowian band Glasvegas, whose sad song “Flowers and Football Tops” was recently pegged as the 2008 song of the year in the UK, despite its length of over six minutes. Elsewhere on their album, lead singer Allen shows off his soul-infused voice (think “The Commitments”) on well-penned songs from the Jam-like “Geraldine” to the pretty “Ice Creme Van.”


Papercuts - You Can Have What You Want - Gnomonsong
Teaming up with Beach House’s Alex Scally was a good move for multi-tasking musician Jason Quever, otherwise known as Papercuts (Quever’s shoegaze-pop project.) Recorded DIY in Quever’s studio, the album features both plenty of Quever’s reverb’d vocals and his ponderings on a variety of topics, from the trials and tribulations of astronauts (“Jet Plane”) to dictatorship (“A Dictator’s Lament”). You’ll also hear several different brands/locales of shoegaze, from the French pop of “Future Primitive” to the German-inspired lounge-rock of “The Void.”


Crippled Black Phoenix - 200 Tons of Bad Luck - Invada
It’s a little difficult to categorize Crippled Black Phoenix, even as they embark on their sophomore album. It’s part post-rock, part doom, part progressive-rock; it does veer between styles, but somehow manages to do so by keeping things interesting as opposed to muddy. CBP’s guitars careen loudly on “Rise Up and Fight,” yet pull back to an almost lo-fi level on tracks like “The Whistler” or the stealthy “Crossing the Bar,” proving that frontman Justin Greaves knows how to feed his personal exasperations into music while still keeping the entire set cohesive.


The Airborne Toxic Event - The Airborne Toxic Event - Shout Factory
They’re being lauded by both the press and fans as heirs to the sounds of The Clash and Arcade Fire - but do they live up to the hype? Well... sort of. The band kept production frills pretty basic on this set, all the better to showcase their skills for catchy arrangements. But melody-wise, they’re pretty uneven from song to song, and some of the lyrics are pretty pedestrian (“Does This Mean You’re Moving On?”, “Your Silent Face,” and the preponderously self-indulgent “Sometime Around Midnight”), which, unfortunately, doesn’t always make up for a good hook.