New Music: Television Personalities, Ethan Rose, A Sunny Day in Glasgow

Television Personalities - You Kept Me Waiting Too Long Long Long Long Long Long Long Long Long (E*Vax of Ratatat Remix) (Domino 2007)

Television Personalities – My Dark Places Remix EP / Domino

It goes with out saying that Dan Treacy and his loose collective of bandmates known as the Television Personalities have been one of the most influential musical spirits of indie rock and pop. Aside from the vocal idolization from hugely influential bands themselves like the Jesus and Mary Chain, Pavement, Nirvana and the Pastels, the loose, whimsy and completely idiosyncratic pop of Treacy may be only rivaled by the Velvet Underground in uniqueness of the genre. Beginning in 1977, Treacy and company recorded sporadically over the next 30 years with a rotating cast reinventing their psychedelic pop, punk and new wave sound with moody, lo-fi songs that simultaneously caused furrowed brows and half-chuckled amazement. It’s pop music that’s impossible to determine whether it was improvised on the spot or obsessesed over to sound that way; as Nitsuh Abebe so perfectly stated in the Pitchfork review of 2006’s My Dark Places (the first Television Personalities album since 1998, Treacy spent an indefinite time on a prison boat (!?) due to drug abuse and waning mental health in the interim): “even in the moments where it’s close to being a musical disaster: You forgive those things the way you might with your best friend’s band.” Following in conjunction with a new album called Are We Nearly There Yet? (being released on February 20 in the US on Overground Records) is this 4-song remix EP of My Dark Places featuring, in order of appearance, E*Vax of Ratatat, I Will (Ian Williams) of Battles, Brooklyn female duo LingLing and noisescapers Black Dice. E*Vax backs “You Kept Me Waiting Too Long” with Ratatat’s catchy instrumental prowess featuring theremin crescendos, hand shakers and synth hooks that will stick in your head for days (not to mention eight more "Long’s" to the title). I Will reshapes the title track in typical Battles format, i.e. completely destructed and pieced back together in a seemingly obtuse manner that works confusingly well. The "Rainbows in Tunnels Mix" of "All the Young Children on Crack" features the clattering drums in the forefront with bright synth, guitar and electronics coloring a decisively dark track. And finally, Black Dice contribute their urban pagan noise-pop sound to the endearing "She Can Stop Traffic," a fitting collaboration since Black Dice definitely share a creative wavelength with Treacy. This is definitely a worthwhile EP for fans of Television Personalities and the bands involved.






Ethan Rose - Song Two (Locust 2006)

Ethan Rose – Ceiling Songs / Locust

Sadly, being in the radio biz, you have to sometimes overlook exceptional albums just because of factors like song-length. Now certainly being in independent or college radio gives you leeway in this aspect, but from my experience, I know even if I put an excellent album like Ethan Rose’s Ceiling Songs in our library the chances of it getting played are very slim. The record features three songs, two of which clock in at 15 and 20 minutes respectively, and it’s categorized as ambient music… gasp! Though most DJs at the wonderful WLUW are very open to all sorts of genres, the reality is they have limited time slots and each second of those two hours are coveted, so anything clocking over five minutes really has to warrant it being played. So because of all these factors, I hesitantly placed Ceiling Songs aside for way too long to concentrate on feeding the eager and impatient ears of my listening audience, and it’s a shame because as I revisit the recording, the more and more I get engulfed in it’s beauty. Released on the exceptional Chicago label Locust back in mid-September 06, Rose’s third LP features musique concrete with soul, transcendent tones sewed together with warm hiss and carefully chosen crackle to create a soothing sound. Interestingly enough, the starting point for this piece was an archaic “Happy Brithday” piano roll and a hand-cranked music box that played only “Jingle Bells.” Rose strategically removed notes and interrupted melodies to form unforeseen patterns of lulling tones then reconstructed and arranged them digitally. Laced with heavily manipulated strings, brass and percussion as well, Ceiling Songs is a study of hidden melodies and the obvious notion that a piece of music is never completed. “Song One” centers around slow moving and reversed music box notes (at least I think) that dissolve into chirping feedback and ebbing piano flurries. “Song Two,” which I link only because it’s the shortest, is the most ambient of the three with drawn-out string plucks and echoing piano notes that gently fold back on each other until they settle into emptiness. And the 20-minute conclusion, “Song Three,” begins much like “Song One” with a very subtle, almost nonexistent rhythm before brightening considerably in the latter half and concluding with shimmering electronic flutters and hollow, high-pitched whirls of feedback. Ceiling Songs is gorgeously and subtly textural as it exposes you to the innerworkings of not only archaic music mechanics like the music box but their resulting melodies as well. It’s music that was masterfully arranged by Rose but has been present since the mechanisms were created long before this recording; they just needed a set of understanding ears to be let loose from their rigid prison of locked gears and finite cranks.






A Sunny Day in Glasgow - Things Only I Can See (Notenuf 2007)

A Sunny Day in Glasgow – Scribble Mural Comic Journal / Notenuf

Could Grizzly Bear really be the next Postal Service? It’s been four years since Give Up dropped the colorful, crystal clear blips with heart-wrenching vocals on our collective and somewhat wincing ears and about two years since their popularity peaked. Concurrently, their devotees of crisp electropop have been waning in the last year as well, and in it’s place a sound washed with reverb, layered heavily and pulling influence in turn with typical 20 year cycles from late 60s psychedelia and late 80s shoegaze. In many ways it’s the pop antidote to the rigid perfectionism of the Postal Service, and Grizzly Bear is quickly becoming the figurehead for the sound. Enter A Sunny Day in Glasgow, a trio of siblings from Philadelphia who fit into this next style wave seamlessly. They turned some college radio heads with their mid-06 EP, The Sunniest Day Ever, and posted a four-star track on Pitchfork, which concurrently drizzled similar hype throughout the blogger hierarchy. The Daniels kids, mastermind Ben and vocalists Lauren and Robin, could not be more primed for indie take over with their debut full-length, Scribble Mural Comic Journal, and while not mind-blowing, it’s a solid record of dreamy shoegaze pop. Defining his sound for the last few years, Ben Daniels began earnestly with cassette recordings collaborating with friend and Glasgow art school-attendee Ever Nalens, who apparently lacked the foresight of Daniels and abandoned the cause back in 2005. This led to sisters Robin and Lauren taking over vocals as Ben moved back home to hone his craft. The resulting sound’s foundation is shoegaze’s sky encapsulating distortion and feedback with every pop hook or stuttering drum machine rhythm overmodulated with care and doused with enough aching reverb to produce a thick atmosphere. Ben is a talented multi-instrumentalist and songwriter as he refuses to settle for anything conventional and regularly experiments with atonal melodies and odd song structures. The Daniels sisters coo with ghostly falsettos that personally are a bit distracting; they remind me too much of the trip-hop singers of a decade past. There are songs where they work well with though, heralded single “C’mon” being the focal point, but I’d definitely prefer a more varying vocal presence or more experimental instrumental pieces like “Panic Attacks are What Make Me ‘Me’”. Be prepared for a good degree of shoegaze revivalist hype with the release of this record and an ominous Grizzly Bear reference, both of which are warranted but not to the degree that they will be stated. I’m certainly not denying the talent of the Daniels’ siblings, in fact I think it’s a pretty impressive record, but I also don’t think they are there quite yet. Hopefully Scribble Mural Comic Journal is not the peak of A Sunny Day in Glasgow but a solid stepping stone forward to such greater heights (hehe harhar hoho).