NEW MUSIC
New Albums From Caveman, Los Campesinos! and the Fall
Kevin Cummins/Getty Images
From left Una Baines on keyboard, Martin Bramah, Karl Burns on drums, Mark E. Smith and Tony Friel of the Fall in 1977.
By JON PARELES, JON CARAMANICA and BEN RATLIFF
Published: November 14, 2011
CAVEMAN
Audio
Caveman
Breaking news about the arts, coverage of live events, critical reviews, multimedia and more.
A sortable calendar of noteworthy cultural events in the New York region, selected by Times critics.
“Coco Beware”
(Magic Man/Orgmusic)
In the songs on Caveman’s debut album, “Coco Beware,” there’s always something flickering and hovering within the mix. It’s a corona of reverb or distortion, or perhaps a sustained keyboard chord or a looped noise, or an unwavering one-chord strum. It’s different from the aggressive, barbed-wire distortion of shoegaze rock, murkier and more vaporous: present but not overwhelming, neither hostile nor welcoming, just a fact of the soundscape, a blur at the horizons. (As a matter of mechanics, the blurring has a lot to do with the capabilities of Caveman’s guitars, which are all handmade by one of the band’s two guitarists, Jimmy Carbonetti, at his Cobra Guitars on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.)
The deliberate soft focus lends depth and an air of mystery to what might have been cool-headed, straightforward indie-rock; there are echoes of the Feelies, the Strokes and, somewhere in the distance, the Beach Boys. Matthew Iwanusa sings lead vocals in a high tenor that stays clear but undemonstrative, calmly delivering terse, elusive lyrics: “Forward motion/’Cause I would like to be one/Decide on me/You’ll try you’ll see.”
Within the fog are clear-cut four-minute songs that set up firm drumbeats and guitar-picking hooks on their way into verse-chorus-verse. One, “December 28th,” is just a two-chord, light-reggae ditty — suitable for, say, Jack Johnson — that lilts, “Our love is here to stay/ooh-woo-woo-hooh,” complete with vocal harmonies. Without hiding the song’s catchiness the production sends clouds of sustained sound drifting past the beat and vocals, all nonchalantly spacey.
But just under the surface anxiety seethes. “My Time” and “Old Friend” grapple with jealous suspicions, while in “Easy Water” the band sings, “I don’t know where I am going/It seems like someone has lost their mind” over a forest of percussion and minor chords strummed into nervous swells of tremolo. In “Thankful” the harmonized, enigmatic refrain — “Thankful are my friends with remorse, ah ah ah ah” — becomes a climactic crescendo, with jittery guitars piling up until the voices disappear. The blur isn’t any kind of cushion; it’s everything the serene, neatly patterned songs can no longer hold back. JON PARELES
LOS CAMPESINOS!
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento