Filed under: Sweet Releases | Tags: Band Of Horses, homecoming, indie, indie rock, Infinite Arms, new release
by Brad MacDonald
“It’s temporary, this place I’m in,” Ben Bridwell insists, as if singing the words to convince himself of the ephemerality of his own situation on Infinite Arms’ opening track, “Factory.” The track finds Band of Horses’ lead songwriter contemplating the myriad, masked signifiers of hotel loneliness that remind, rather than dull, this sensation. The line comes off more like a plea than a statement of fact. For an album so fully devoted to the concept of home, Bridwell sets the table by placing the word in stark relief, opening the album as far away from home as possible: in an empty, sterile, cheap recreation of it. With the mass-produced hotel environment of “Factory” as a starting point and some distant, warm hearth clearly an ultimate destination, the real joy is in the journey. The clarity of vision that follows makes Infinite Arms the most cohesive and impressive release to date for Band of Horses.
After carving out a distinctly northwestern sound for their debut release, Everything All the Time, Band of Horses left the clanging guitars and reverb-drenched vocals of Seattle to return back east, recording the follow-up that would become Cease to Begin in North Carolina and incorporating many of the country and Americana elements of Bridwell’s native South Carolina. If Band of Horses’ debut was northwestern indie rock with touches of country, Cease to Begin flipped those proportions. In this sense, Infinite Arms is of a piece with Cease to Begin, continuing to emphasize that musical aesthetic while reinforcing it thematically in a way that the band had not previously managed.
Read about the songs after the break… (more…)
Filed under: Aural Pleasure | Tags: avant-garde, Budapest, Hungary, jazz, Jazzékiel, punk, underground
by Spencer
image courtesy of myspace.com/jazzekiel
What happens when you take the smooth, smoky sounds of barroom jazz and mix it with screamed vocals and punk breakdowns? Budapest, Hungary’s jazz-punk band, Jazzékiel (pronounced Jazz-eh-key-ell) is a group of guys whose unique brand of music is as rag-tag as the way they look. Their music runs the gamut from metal, to math-rock to punk, to finger-snapping jazz. One would think, upon seeing Jazzékiel that they never really decided what type of music they should play, so they decided to play them all. My favorite song of theirs, named A Rossz Testvér (meaning “The Bad Brother”) has an upbeat, catchy, scat-singing section that has resonated in my head since I saw them months back.
The funny thing about music in Hungary is that the musicians in the “big” bands are still just local dudes, and can be seen taking your order at restaurants (in the case of a popular rap group, Punnany Massif), or helping you in various stores throughout the country.
As for the band itself, the lead singer, Áron Hegyi, looks like an angry, bearded homeless man that was pulled off the streets to perform for your pleasure, and perform he does. The keyboard player, who sold me minutes for my mobile phone a week before I saw them play, tickles the ivories with veracity and tenacity. The odd make-up of the group only leads to the appeal of the band as a whole. Neither their look nor their music fit into any previous mould. Their live show is not one to be missed; I know it’s difficult to recommend it to Americans, because a stateside tour doesn’t seem likely in the near future. However, I highly recommend heading over to their newly re-designed MySpace page and taking a listen, at: www.myspace.com/jazzekiel. If you like it, buy it! I’m sure they’d appreciate it, and say “Köszönjuk szépen!”
Let us know what you think in the comments section!
