New Music: Tera Melos, subtractiveLAD, New Ruins

Tera Melos - (Is Good for What Ails You) (Springman 2007)

Tera Melos - Drugs to the Dear Youth EP / Springman

Roseville, California. Molly Ringwald? Jonathan Taylor Thomas? Summer Sanders? 18 boxcar explosions in a Southern Pacific railyard in 1973? No, I suppose these aren't the best of reasons to care about the Sacramento suburb. But it turns out that Springman's Tera Melos haven't given up the fight for Wikipedia notoriety (somewhere, Susan Peters is laughing - disambiguate that). In fact, their latest instrumental EP Drugs to the Dear Youth should reach those of us still decidedly lukewarm in the wake of last year's Don Caballero record... Or maybe it was that Joan of Arc b-sides collection that caught you the wrong way? Either way, '06 wasn't exactly a banner year for reliable jazz-cap'n'd math-rockers (Battles don't count since they took the cheap way out and just combined EPs). The good news: Tera Melos are a well-oiled machine that've already put out a noisy debut full-length and played dates with Bear Vs. Shark, Isis, These Arms Are Snakes, and The Locust to name but four. The better news: Drugs to the Dear Youth is somewhat ironic in title - the members aren't sXe, but they don't really do drugs either - but their music is all earnest fun + experimentation, a drug in and of itself. Just listen to that bass on "(Is Good for What Ails You)." You kind of wish all hip-hop tracks thumpa thumped that deep. Dr. Who Diss? Paging the future: Meet the shape of math to come.













subtractiveLAD - The Shell (n5MD 2007)

subtractiveLAD - No Man's Land / n5MD

But to hear the future, sometimes it's better to work backwards. Canadian IDM wizard Stephen Hummel knows this all too well: No Man's Land is his third full-length in three years, but its progression is a logical one if you've been following along at home since '05's Giving Up the Ghost and last year's Suture. XLR8R favorites n5MD (aka "No Fives, MiniDiscs," inspired by their release style when they opened for business in 2000 and not long before Sony decided the MiniDisc market was getting a little too pear-shaped for their taste) picked up on this and declared subtractiveLAD the posterboy icon for their "emotional experiments in music." Maybe the pressure was on for Hummel to deliver again, but he must've shrugged it off back at the ranch in Vancouver: This third LP doesn't miss any steps in showing off the label's faith in him. "The Shell" is the opening track and most obvious highlight, orbiting all Gagarin-like around the steady beat and guitar lines as muted synths and keys twinkle like Venus on a good night... Then falling back to earth in the final two minutes awash in a helicopter recovery unit of guitar fuzz only Over the Atlantic have bested in the past year... But No Man's Land isn't all about hitting the exosphere only to plummet downward again. No, this is a thoughtful and thought-out album noting ambient pioneers (so I guess that means Eno and, him failing, simple country folk like Boards of Canada) and anyone who's ever heard gamelan played effectively (The "Solaris" soundtrack doesn't count), awake right from the moment it pops out of its - I promised I wouldn't end on this - shell. Just don't call it emo.













New Ruins - Nameless (Hidden Agenda 2007)

New Ruins - The Sound They Make / Hidden Agenda

Which brings us to Champaign, Illinoise's New Ruins. Emo is such an irrelevant term in the underground these days (Seriously, who listens to Kerosene 454 anymore?), the kids have all agreed on their MySpace pages that the only thing worse than being called emo is being called indie. We can blame bands like The Arcade Fire (The Neon Babble in stores soon, remember) and bands like Clap Your Hands Say Who? and The Shins, but shouldn't we be blaming The Beatles? I mean, if it weren't for them, we probably wouldn't have the fundamentals of indie-rock as we now know it. New Ruins know this, but they don't give a damn: In a stunning rebuttal to The Shins' weak position and weaker argument on Wincing the Night Away that indie-rock isn't very invigorating even on a big budget once you realize the possibilities of, well, Tera Melos and subtractiveLAD, The Sound They Make is that of a band that's accepted the terra firma of pop songs and exploited the loophole of Shins b-sides to make an album that's better than anything James Mercer has tried lately. "Nameless" won't change your life - Zach Braff and Natalie Portman fans, please file to your nearest exit in an orderly fashion - but its strummed simplicity is one of the album's better moments daringly placed as the second track behind flagship single "Ships." I'll take the emotional poignance and inverted world-circa-'03 of "Nameless" instead... For while an out-and-out rock tune's exuberance can get real old real fast, a poignant breather doubling as lilting lullaby never does. Maybe it isn't the future or the past that matters, then - maybe it's the timelessness of the present. New Ruins know. Do you?