Review: Old Light “The Dirty Future”

Old Light
“The Dirty Future”
(2010 – Arena Rock)

Old Light’s debut record “The Dirty Future” feels as much like a sleigh ride with blinders into the future as it does a continuation of a flow that began way earlier, in the deep American past. The band is helmed by former SF Bay Area multi-instrumentalist Garth Klippert, and manned by stout Portlanders Patrick Finn, Charlie Hester, and perhaps the finest stable of drummers in town: Todd Roper, Scott MacPherson, and Jose Medeles. Not only is the record the sum of the decades of musicianship of these players (each of whose strengths are used to great effect), it reaches back and picks up narrative threads that stretch from Dylan to Harry Smith’s folk collection to the jangling pianoforte anti-federalist ditties of yore.

The music of Old Light—not to say the band, which was sparked into its current flame by Hester–began when Klippert began layering tracks with an old autoharp bought from an antique instrument guru in Winters, CA. The echoing layers of harp and guitar on these songs offer a non-specific sound that blazes through and shines like gold. It’s the antique glow of pewter, worn wooden tools, and a sunset obscured by smog, waste product of California dreaming. Picture Brian Wilson camping in a cardboard box.

Like a lot of good music, these songs are a question of balance, opposing forces that rarely tilt the scale too far one way or the other. This balance prevents the band from unhinging and cutting loose, and, even in stellar songs like “Pretty Machete”, I wish the tension that’s throbbing within the music would explode. But Old Light is a train and perhaps no-one would benefit from its running off the rails. The band has somehow managed to straddle the worlds of Black Sabbath and Grizzly Bear avec panache.

The balance takes many shapes, too, with Klippert often delivering lyrical sour grapes in a chocolate-covered shell. You get the feeling that a youth who feels old is picking a fight with an old man that can whupp ass, just to test the boundaries, and that somehow this fight belongs in the phrase “intergenerational radness,” which is central to the song “Magentar.” The title track is the kind of song you might listen to many times before the lyrics finally hit and you realize the shadows that hang behind a jaunty beat:

A cart full of clouds is rollin down
Down to the edges of the edge of yr town
Dumped in a landfill of plastic and love
Beaten and blown by the power above

It’s the record’s great moments like these, lyrically and instrumentally, moments of shadow-crossed sunlight, when the awe and respect that human life’s complexity inspires in the music becomes evident. For Old Light, the divergent tendencies of human behavior toward society and bestiality, good and evil, pleasure and pain, are not only ambiguous but constantly shifting and occasionally merging. In songs like “Wolf & Whippoorwill” (with simultaneously sirenic and creepy backing vocals by Jolie Holland) and “Noirion,” (featuring Medeles’ kitchen-sink percussion suavity, sounding like low-level demons playing dice with bones and doubloons) it’s unclear whether the singer is about to join a pack of wolves or to feed them; or whether, as in Rimbaud, the sinking boat is freeing the sailor to float or letting him plunge, sea filling his lungs, and bringing him down with it.

As true as Old Light is to its roots, though, it’s the kind of band that’s absorbed enough of the last few decades of pop culture to make it subtly distinguishable from products of those decades. Like the Budos Band, Old Light is a confluence of traditions in the way that the earliest jazz and rock groups were; in this case, the band draws on soul, country, and rock to find the fear of and yen for wandering common to all.

Reading over this review, I wonder: where’s the heat?  At first listen, “The Dirty Future” didn’t make me scream at the top of my lungs, like other records have. The liveliness of the band–which is nearly captured on the recording–pulsates out of it, not searing but smoldering.  Some kinds of love you can live with, they don’t hit you all at once, you can warm yourself by them. Music’s the same. This isn’t some crazy girl you went to high school with.

Bay Area Buzz album reviews

These reviews were published in Bay Area Buzz magazine, San Francisco, in 2003-04:

Andalusia    Around Three in the Morning
(self-released)
It’s unfortunate you slobbering reader-monkeys don’t get press releases with your discs, because half of the listening experience with up-and-humping (or downward-dumping) indie groups is the way they perceive themselves. And I quote, “This four-piece outfit calls the Bay Area home, but their feet are not-so-firmly planted elsewhere. It’s somewhere higher up, in that mysterious, indefinable, swirling layer of the atmosphere where dreams live.” Jesus. Then it cites Godspeed!You Black Emperor, Cocteau Twins, and My Bloody Valentine as their “compelling” mix of influences. So this Suzi Maclay, the singer, her daddy musta worked at a reverb plant, and brought it home free every night or somethin’, becuz they appear to think that totally coking out your sound with reverb produces the intensity of GSYBE, the Rosicrucian moon ritual of the C-Twins, and that metallic-tongue flavor of acid shellacked by MBV. This is like Shouting the Poetic Fallacies of High School Journalkeepers through a $12,000 Mr. Microphone. Well, until someone gives Enya a distortion pedal, Andalusia will have to do.

Blood & Time    At the Foot of the Garden
(Neurot)
Don’t you ever get sick of hearing about the human condition? Let’s have more music that at least attempts universality, rather than a kind of ego overhead projector. As the name suggests, Blood & Time are bloody bodies stuck in time, and the minutes do drag. Unlike Michael Gira’s cathartic, ecstatic Angels of Light, B&T is lukewarm, not cold enough to be invigorating, nor hot enough to be cleansing. This disc may make you want to admire a giant fern.

DJ Irene    Fearless
(Surge Recordings)
When you’re dancing, something shifts between about 100 and 110 beats per minute. “Sex Machine,” “OPP,” “So Whatcha Want” (all under 100 bpm) encourage utmost freakiness and grinding of backsides. But house music, who dances to this? It’s too fast, it’s a job, it has no syncopation, it’s a workout, it’s plain yogurt. House music totally discriminates against fat people who want to have a good time, dammit! Anyhoo, DJ Irene certainly must be “fearless” of the repercussions as it were of her brand (as in name brand) of house on the world of human reproduction. I hear Ecstasy kind of kills the libido anyway, hence music that would only get a rutting dog in the mood. And hence the pacifiers, now that I think of it. And even krautrock generally doesn’t re-frickin-peat this much, just a complete plateau of intensity. 31 guest DJs on this disc and none of them produce anything but the occasional oscillator wash and single-stroke snare roll. How is this different from some Make-U-Sweat-Dance-Party-$19.95-through-this-special-TV-offer type three-disc set? Please write care of this publication if you can explain this stuff.

Early Day Miners    The Sonograph EP
(Acuarela)
This group is definitely some guys sitting in wooden chairs, running slides over their guitars, bent over and drooling due to endless fascination with a sweet little series of notes, really hitting the strings with just the right pressure, actual nighttime crickets of June chittering out back in one song, silhouettes of pine trees, the whole thing. The record starts with an introspective harmonikay-ed, piana-ed folk song, and from there the pace slows and the perspective widens, becoming less verbally articulate and more atmospheric and intuitive, and by the closing “Misrach,” is just sweet amplified maple sap. This music is all those little moments that are just perfect, the light a certain way, or the air rising and falling, the way a room looks with your eyes almost shut, the old wooden wagon in the middle of a field. Somebody said we look for immortality in the wrong direction: it’s in the past. Somehow, who knows how, this ambient-slowcore unit succeeds in catching the fireflies of the past in a jar and keeping them alive.

The End    Within Dividia
(Relapse)
Slayer is great and so is Mastodon, but does it need to get more extreme than Mastodon? Behind the gor-jus quadruple-gatefold sleeve of cracked glass-plate sepia photographs and under the interesting concept of the album, the relations of the creepazoid inhabitants of the “Dividia Estate”, this “extreme metal” group is another whiplash-fast, screaming bunch of great musicians playing insane parts based on 132-sided geometric figures or something. But you can’t make out a single word. What should we think when a group is described as “punishing but rewarding”? Let’s pretend I’m eight years old (the mental age of most people anyway). I’m being punished but rewarded. Have I been a good boy or a naughty boy? Would you rather watch a sleek panther take down a gazelle [metal] or do you want it to rip your throat out [extreme metal]? Or do you want four cyborg ox-machines to draw and quarter you [The End]? If the latter, The End is a great starter.

Mirah   C’mon Miracle
(K Records)
Old Time Relijun   Lost Light
(K Records)
Behold the sensuality of K Records spouting up with two plates by Mirah and Old Time Relijun that are, respectively, a shoulder-squeeze and a punch in that spot next to your bicep. Mirah’s sweet sobulish voice coos and burbles over cello, samba drums, warm acoustic, delivering heart-truths in a sweet medium, kind of like giving your dog a worm-pill in a spoonful of peanut butter. OTR’s Arrington de Dionyso, on the other hand, howls like Jon Spencer would if he weren’t such a poseur. Dionyso seems to be screaming out for any spirit, deity, or force, that happens to be blowing by to join the kettle-drums and klang-klang and raise some holy hell. Mirah’s instrumentation is all around soft and thumpy and pizzicato and although the whole cute-and-gentle-girl voice kind of wears after a while, there are two songs on C’mon Miracle that are alone worth the price of admish. “Lost Light” is spooky like the whole Tupelo album, but in a way that sucks you in. Nick Cave’s God floods a town and out of the fleeing populace comes Elvis; Dionyso can’t wait for God to dump a lake on him and destroy his naked ass in ecstatic fashion. While Mirah humbly whispers her wish for a miracle, Old Time Relijun demands it and is meanwhile making their own.

Stereolab    Margerine Eclipse
(Elektra)
Blink-182    s/t
(Geffen)
Stereolab, providing vicarious European urbanity since nineteen-ninety-something. Dear readers, you’ve all heard Stereolab. And if you haven’t, like tangerine sherbet, you can imagine the flavor. Gelato is probably a more apt comparison, since I’ve been a hound lately (Shattuck one block south of University.) Krautrock, Chambord, Francoise Hardy, gelato, Steve Reich, yum! “Dots & Loops” is pistachio, “Cobra Phases…” is espresso, “Margerine Eclipse” is champagne, and “Random Noise Bursts…” is some sort of heavy chocolate. So this is my Stereolato hierarchy. Pistachio all the time. Chocolate and champagne gelato are lovely once in a while. As smooth and uniform as champagne is, it has some surprises and comes at your tongue from different angles if you take your time licking it and don’t wolf it down like a Peanut Buster Parfait. Which it isn’t, but boy is it tasty! One gripe: the la dee da la la la las are overabundant, Laetitia, n’est-ce pas?
So I walked into FYE the other day and the pink and green graffiti cover screams, “Like, Buy Me! ‘kay?!” And I like totally pop it into the player in my Jetta, and totally flip-pa! Not really. But doesn’t it trip you out that millions of kids had that very experience and that, for some, Blink-182 is their favorite band? Well, a) whatever, it’s just music, get over it and b) this album’s songs don’t sound identical and c) what is there really to criticize this band for? Like Stereolab, you know what to expect, and your disgust equals delusion. The tunes, the lyrics, the playing, the arrangements: I couldn’t find any flaws that didn’t boil down to personal taste. Personally, this makes me cringe like a Goodwill Christmas sweater. The really disgusting thing, however, is what lurks behind bands like this. The radio and PR machines that make this stuff ubiquitous and bacterial. So okay, another gripe about Punk Rock 101 is merited: what’s with letting folks with cleft noses sing?

The Yellow Press    Summer Tour 2003 EP
(self-released)
The new wave dance party currently in progress continues with The Yellow Press. Some synth, some peppy rhythms, songs to clap to from a band that’d be fun at a party. Not as good as Gang of Four, natch, but probably more fun. Does the lyric “I wanna see your ass on the ceiling/I think your boyfriend’s appealing” give you the gist?

Julian Cope    Rite Now
(Head Heritage)
Most bands either get better or worse, right? Ever since Julian H. slayed his ’80s wuss-pop with the mighty “Jehovakill,” he has not only been getting better, but transcendent. Now he’s figured out what rock is really for: opening your third ear. Rite Now is the third in a series of albums: Rite is breakbeat-based tracks and Rite 2 is four wah/Mellotron shag-fests. The album is comprised of four expansive tracks that shed verse-chorus-verse temporal burn-out in favor of mane-shaking turn-out. As the liner notes point out, “This is shamanic rock ‘n’ roll that sparks ecstasy and awareness through freak-out to the sweaty pagan teen inside everyone.” The opener, “Twilight of the Motherfuckers,” is a steroid-al (or rather Ephedral) Neu-esque assault that clears the foul city air for “Give the Poet Some,” which, how shall we say, should make every groin in the vicinity grind. “Supernatural Agencies” is a whiplash-inducer whose title is the only thing that can explain Kevlar’s mother-fucker of a 15-minute guitar-shred, alongside JC’s hypnotic bass and chanting. The on-the-two closer “Ephaedra” is just (sigh) a tongue in your ear. Like Sly Stone and James Brown, Julian Cope makes me go “duuuhhhh…gaaaahhhh…brbbrrrbb.” Like “There’s A Riot Goin” On,” you simply don’t need a second opinion to tell you this is great. So just buy it. Now!! Go!!!

Dropsy   s/t
(self-released)
Dropsy is an old term for “edema,” which denotes a swelling of the limbs caused by water retention. It causes people, basically, to look like vegetables. But unlike the disease, David Cooper has found a way to leak some of the immense amount of stuff, both poisonous and pleasant, which swells his modern mind. Through witty and arch lyrics, Cooper’s chocolate-shake vocals veer from a sharp rib-jab to perversion to sincerity with aplomb. The band is hecka tight (featuring, alas, too little of Cooper’s handy vibes chops) and have clearly been incubating in an oxygen-rich lounge somewhere in Hackensack, with the saxy Tom Griesser and drunk ‘bonist Tom Yoder taking young ladies and toothless geezers from the slick to the slimy, and just jazzing the hell out of the general populace. When you hear things like “Sheer force alone cannot chew the gum/of the fundamental hum” over a funky beat, what you’ve got is a group of Mensa fifth-graders in tuxedoes, and Dropsy does appeal to that need we all have for a laid-back Tom Jones.

Giant Value    On the Move Avec Giant Value
(self-released)
The sun flowing through curtains stirred by the breeze. Riding your bike down a tree-lined avenue. Water balloons, sparklers, and bubble wrap. An old Astrud Gilberto record playing on a Fisher-Price record player. Bar-b-qued zucchini, sangria, and pierogis. Wrestling your cousin on the lawn and giving him an affectionate flying elbow smash. This is the best description I can come up with for Giant Value’s second disc. GV’s easy-going wisdom shines through clever lyrics and hummable tunes. Since this came out, Vinnie’s tactful drumming, Dena’s Gibsonic finesse, and Bru’s bubbling bass and Farfisa action has had my head bobbing, mouth ooh-ing and aah-ing and la-la-la-ing, and much slapping of hands on dashboards. Throw your damned “Best of Bob Marley” no-woman-no-cry crap out the windah already and listen to this to be reminded that everything is eternally alright and beautiful. This is fun and thoughtful. This is the sound of two hands clapping.

Moore Brothers    On & Out
(Amazing Grease)
I hate Simon and Garfunkel. I hate The Monkees. I hate Herman’s Hermits. So why, why, do I like the Moore Brothers? Watching them and their rapt audience live is like seeing kids ogle puppies frolicking through pink cotton balls in the window of a pet store. Blaaargghh!! But then there’s no denying the beauty of Cheech and Chong’s, I mean Thom and Greg’s voices. The Bros.’ second release thankfully has more instrumental meat and diversity than their nearly-acapella live shows, and mostly makes the tunes soothers without being snoozers. The highlights are the three-hitter “Tiny Bongs,” the kind of warm, giggly thing they do so well; the rockin’ (with a small “r”) “Salton Sea,” whose driving guitar and drums balance nicely with the vocals; and the surprising treat “Emotional Rollercoaster,” with its bubbling beats. Overall, the brothers’ dynamic finesse and unique arrangements shine on this disc. Remember the Bugs Bunny episode with the orange monster and the bottle of ether? This is unwholesome but fun music, so take a huff.

Rykarda Parasol    Here She Comes…
(Blood of the Young)
Initially sounding like a peppy version of the Bad Seeds fronted by P.J. Harvey, comparisons of Rykarda Parasol to Nick Cave are inevitable. Dead lovers, whisky, love-as-narcotic-habit, thunder-and-lightning. RP’s deadpan vocals (the band is named for the singer) are backed by Josh Gibson’s appealingly loopy piano and organ, and generally spare instrumentation. Although her voice is alluring, its super-cool delivery undermines the emotion of her able lyrics, especially in “Lonesome Place,” about a woman’s lover who is lynched by klansmen: “They took me out to some lonesome place/They asked, ‘Do you believe in the great white race?’” The most effective tune turns out to be a secret track after the sixth and last song, where Parasol’s wonderfully bored vocals recite a poem by Baudelaire about an opium den over a psychedelic wash of organ. These are engaging songs, and the passion that lies in wait in this ripening band will be something to hear when they let it loose. C’mon Rykarda, pull a Roxy Music on our asses!

Relic    Lift Up Your Gates (of Hell), The King of Glory Shall Come In
(self-released)
Relic’s press photos, which show them performing with like nine keyboards and a bazillion toms in a marble rotunda somewhere in full armor–I repeat, full armor–seriously raised my hopes for their medieval rock. Preparing to laugh, I also raised my fist. While Relic’s lyrics are derived from 14th to 16th century poetry, their music is a melange of ’70s prog, ’80s metal, ’90s riffage, and moldy madrigal. People, this brew sounds awful on paper, but tracks like “Dance of Death” and “St. Stephen & King Herod” find the lads capable of lopping the heads off invading Normans (and indie “rockers”) with synthesized strings, arpeggiatic guitar shrieks, bizarre vocal effects, and Rototoms. The real beauty of Relic is the feeling that they’ll do whatever the fuck they want, which includes (between slabs of riffage) a whistling solo over synthesized choir voices in “I Want Be an Angel.” Relic has the aesthetic and the chops of Rush (shudder) minus the joyless pretension. I’ve never had headcheese, but this must be what it’s like.

The Blow    The Concussive Caress
(K Records)
The subtitle of this K Records LP is “Casey Caught Her Mom Singing Along With the Vacuum.” The Blow is also known as Get the Hell Out of the Way of the Volcano. The Blow is Khaela Maricich. What does anyone need to know except that Khaela has such a sweet and coy voice. What the sap boils down to is that this stuff is pure Grade A dark amber maple and I could listen, with pleasure, to her marathon-reading the Chicago phonebook. The Blow shares the aesthetic and is also turned on by caves, Scrabble, and shucking clothes. But whereas Beat Happening is at-peace-with-W.A.S.P., The Blow has got groove, god beautiful grooves, cello grooves, chamber grooves, stick-against-suitcase grooves. She’s got janky drums and layers her voice like a napoleon. She’s Missy Elliot and Timbaland all wrapped up in a wool blanket. She’s got synth parameters for your quiet epileptic fit. Half her songs are over before you can put your finger on them, the others you settle into like a greased bolt into a nut. Sometimes (How Naked Are We Going to Get?) her lyrics mean without trying to; otherwise, she pulls a Neil Hagerty with stuff that makes me go Huh? and wanna keep going Huh? and let her do it to me again and again and again and again. Oh!!

KK Null    Atomik Disorder
(Neurot)
Mallet chunk beams wall fireblanket muck ruckus blunt croak spatula drunk grump bunk mung. Schist squeedle lickety blip whist click slip nip. Duck duck caboose sluice bubbles lob pit bobbing mine lurch slurry. Groom plumb aluminum react nibble tactile tictoc talc titmouse blink stick. Muffin twist bluff please stitch flakes simple cyst grange walnut tank umbrage bracelet pork plank sword swish. Grip stutter barge utter budge pimple plod plump dump seek sweep. Bleach kine needle pine beetle twiddle front wok scold chockablock. Loop Loplop sump point yodel idle worm whittle garter girdle burner. Bundle stretch bottle kit. Tongue bung king dumb zang pang pong.

Manitoba    Up in Flames
(Domino)
Imagine a campfire in which most of the instruments of the world are burning. While being consumed, they emit tones beautiful and pathetic, in shifting degrees of intensity. You watch the flames, mesmerized, as some orange sounds leap up, then fade as bluish and greenish sounds lick in their place. Suddenly a saxophone-log squeals and pops as pitch oozes out. There are four lads in chipmunk masks who look like pasty car salesmen heya-heying around the fire like Bugs Bunny Injuns, beating on the parts (including a leather seat) of a sea-foam green 1961 El Dorado. Whoa there , Manitoba is one guy. One guy with (shudder) a laptop! Despite that, Dan Snaith is, like Mahler, strong on orchestration and orchestral color. Like the self-sampling Freeform, he successfully frappes the eastern, the western, the bangin, the random, the soft, and the grand into a delicious frappe! Unlike many of the lap[top]dogs, however, he does it con brio, piu imaginativo, vivace, and scherzando. Rather than sounding like a software user plugging Spectrum and My Bloody variables into a logarithm, Manitoba is a geek going apeshit with fingerpaints. This shit is massive!

Nanang Tatang   Muki
(Tiger Style)
While listening to this, I looked up into the cloudless Saturday sky and saw, high up, a blue balloon floating from roof to roof. Funny how a reviewer need not invent images anymore to describe music. Comparisons of this superbly named pair to Low are about as avoidable as black flies in upstate New York. [Note to left-coasties: i.e., unavoidable]. But the similarity pretty much ends at the vocals. The minimal instrumentation, too, is there, but is’t melancholy so much as taking its time, as if on the way to or from an afternoon nap. Parents Elizabeth Mitchell and Daniel Littleton (both formerly of Ida) seem to have taken some lessons from their new child about observing the world and themselves without bias or bitterness. The lyrics are sometimes like the pillow talk of a smart, half-asleep couple. This is a pleasant record, two years in the making, that you can easily appreciate as one made solely for its creators. The music wanders, repeats itself like rain, or reclines like a cat, as it wishes. If I drink a glass of warm milk, and feel my heart-rate flag, I can get into this.

Vervein    Vast Low Cities
(self-released)
Vervein makes me want to listen to another band, which isn’t necessarily a good effect for a band to have. That other band is The Breeders. Apart from some nice cello and squeaky-clean Rickenbackering, what makes Vervein different? Well, the Breeders are always ready to pull the rug out from under you. They’re a crazy but appealing bunch of flirts. Vervein’s pretty vocals and thoughtful playing keep coming through song after song, with lyrics that make you wonder and smile: “patience is the only thing/that comes to those who wait.” The line “slow and steady wins the race,” from “Mockingbird,” might very well describe them. The Deals are the super-cool rockers who will never go out with you, much less look at your sorry ass. Croonistas Jessica Congdon and Rachel Fuller, though, will throw you a nice smile as they look up from reading a Murakami book on a perfect day at a College Ave cafe. Or you’ll have an interesting conversation with them about nebulae at a party while everyone else is crushing Pabst cans on their foreheads. They’re pistachio gelato to The Breeders’ chocolate ice cream. Esther, Allison, Rachel, Jessica, sorry to go on about the Breeders in your review. Maybe you know how wallflowers always get shoved into a corner by the hipsters.

Stara Nova    demo
(self-released)
Listening to these four songs is like eating a piece of frozen wedding cake: a reminder of a blissful moment long gone. The music is centered on the pitch-perfect vocals of Karina DeNike and Jessica Grace, whose superb harmonies float on a dark current of Eric Garland’s restrained and textured drumming and James Frazier’s guitar, which triples as bass and astral projector. Paced like Sunday afternoon, the songs are stars, cold and beautiful from afar, white-hot up close. “The Burn,” feeling like an uncomfortable break-up talk, exemplifies the music’s ambiguity. From arch and cool verses (“you think that you’re hot/but your star is falling fast/to this cold earth”) erupt passionate choruses (“don’t you leave me alone”). With Garland’s vibraphone finesse, “Outside Looking In” is a dilemma between comfort and vulnerability. With a killer drum outro, “Sleeping With the Enemy” swallows regret, duplicity, and lust in one bourbonic (but ladylike) gulp. Akin to Massive Attack, Bjork on a mild sedative, and better than Portishead, Stara Nova’s songs keep a polite distance, but aren’t to be taken lightly. After getting sucked into this disc a dozen times, you may be hesitant to put it in. It’s that good.