A Difficult 2014—Part Two

A FORMAL HORSE—s/t EP (self-released)

I started to listen to these things called podcasts in 2014, and it was during Sid Smith’s Podcast from the YellowRoom that I first heard A Formal Horse. “I Lean” was the tune, and I immediately drove over to the British five-piece’s Bandcamp page to get their five-song EP. They combine metal, jazz, and prog rock into appealing songs that are complex, yet compact, full of shock dynamics and interesting diversions. The EP features three vocal songs and two brief instrumentals that highlight the band’s musicianship and restless, meticulous approach. “I Lean” is still the standout track for me, lurching as it does between an eeriness that reminds me of Thinking Plague at their most accessible and sections that attack with prog-metal fervour. And because I rarely hear vocalists who impress me nowadays, it’s worth noting that the band have someone special in Francesca Lewis. Her precisely sung, unaffected style is one of their biggest assets. Just to be able to apply gravitas to lines like “No-smoking signs on a sex booth/lackeys cooking cats on a tin roof” is no small feat. Based on the 20 minutes of material on hand here, A Formal Horse get 2014’s most promising newcomer award.

HORSEBACK—Piedmont Apocrypha (Three-Lobed)

The tension between black metal and Krautrock and post-rock in Horseback’s music is mostly gone now, yet Piedmont Apocrypha remains a compelling listen. Horseback sounds more grounded and comfortable. If I’ve read the liner notes correctly, Jenks Miller credits the musical direction to moving to the country “closer to the trees than to other people” and to the sight lines from his back porch. His approach focuses more on clean guitars and the lonely rural twang…reminiscent of mist hanging over barren fields. The spirits of Neil Young and Gastr del Sol lurk in the title track and “Consecration Blues.” The album embraces everything sparse and airy until the last track, the 17-minute “Chanting Out the Low Shadow,” where vocals get growly and guitars get dissonant and things get heavy in a primitive blues way, building up to a bombastic climax. Another fine example of American art rock, and maybe Horseback’s most distinctive work yet.

LED BIB—The People in Your Neighbourhood (Cuneiform)

I’ve been ladling praise over this hard-riffing British jazz quintet for a few years now, and I’ll continue to do so, because The People in Your Neighbourhood is another excellent release (they also put out a live record this year). There’s little to choose between this album and their last couple—they all deliver a walloping. Maybe they venture out further this time—the detours away from the head of each song are more severe. These excursions can range far and wide, but the tenor sax team of Pete Grogan and Chris Williams always snap you back to attention with their piercing attack.

ARTIFICIAL BRAIN—Labyrinth Constellation (Profound Lore)

Some of the best cover art this side of Effigy of the Forgotten is the first clue that this is pretty crucial tech death. In an attempt to describe their sound, I’d say Artificial Brain occasionally come off as a more accessible Gorguts. Their songs have dissonant and spacey parts, yet the structures are compact and anchored by powerful down-to-earth riffs. The recording is a little murky but still punishing, with vocals mixed low enough to complement, not annoy. Many thanks for their show (part of a surreal bill with Gigan and Pyrrhon) at the Red Room here in Vancouver, with a guest vocalist who apparently flew in for a single gig because their regular singer couldn’t cross the border. That’s dedication to the cause.

HEDWIG MOLLESTAD TRIO—Enfant Terrible (Rune Grammofon)

Headliners on an excellent day at the 2014 Jazz Fest, the Hedwig Mollestad Trio laid down pretty much what I later heard on this album: hard-rocking jazz fusion based around heavy riffs, a solid rhythm section, and Mollestad’s versatile guitar work. They get comparisons to Black Sabbath—fair enough, given their penchant for covering the Sabs—but mostly they remind me of the Dixie Dregs in their solos and song structures. If the riffs first get the head nodding, then what the band explores after the main themes provides the real substance and excitement.

A Difficult 2011, 20 to 16

I've already posted full reviews of each of these albums, so the blurbs are relatively short for this installment.

20. Abriosis—Tattered and Bound

Abriosis are the only other Canadian band to make this list. I had to give them a placing based on their ripping live set and this world-class album. Tattered and Bound is a masterclass in discordant, technical death metal. Old-school, raw metal of death got most of the press in 2011, but I’m always in the market for a few key tech-death albums every year. Abriosis cut through with clarity and precision. Attention, Willowtip!

19. Earth—Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I (Southern Lord)

For all their sprawl, the last few Earth albums were tightly wound. There was great discipline in their repetition and tempos. It was like watching a tightrope walker; balance and symmetry in action. On Angels of Darkness... they let go of all that and did not fall. The music often just hovers there as Dylan Carlson directs the band with a light touch on the guitar. Get ready for Angels of Darkness II very soon.

18. Led Bib—Bring Your Own (Cuneiform)

I love Led Bib’s brand of raucous, hard-hitting action jazz. It’s exciting to hear saxophones duking it out for supremacy as the rhythm section races away like Prost and Senna side by side, heading into turn one. The dynamics and live power of five crack musicians playing together delivers the kind of jolt that I don’t often get from rock records. I haven’t sampled much of Cuneiform’s jazz roster, but I’m glad I took a chance on Led Bib, first with 2009’s Sensible Shoes and now with this fantastic follow-up.

17. Nicklas Barker—El Ultimo Fin De Semana

The soundtrack album lives on. Nicklas Barker’s main band is Anekdoten, and he brings that band’s melancholy (and Mellotron) to this collection of instrumentals written for a Spanish thriller. Some rock soundtrack albums work well as rock albums, full stop, such as Pink Floyd’s More Soundtrack (appreciated here) or Air’s The Virgin Suicides. Those albums incorporated songs amidst the musical interludes, whereas this one doesn’t. Still, its eerie snippets of music form a nicely sustained mood piece. The opening theme of “Celestial Ghost” will get under your skin immediately.

16. Six Organs of Admittance—Asleep on the Floodplain (Drag City)

Ben Chasny turned in quite an intimate record this time around. Asleep on the Floodplain offers a number of solo guitar performances as well as forlorn ballads and a big, buzzing hypnotic thing (“S/Word and Leviathan”) that's either the product of inspired improvisation or a happy accident in the studio...maybe a bit of both. Chasny's understated virtuosity has never been more evident. I'll always be impressed by his ability to create such vivid pictures with simple elements.

Led Bib—Bring Your Own (Cuneiform)

To adapt a line from LA punk legends Fear, Led Bib’s alright if you like saxophones. Fortunately I do—I haven’t always, but I came around to them. As a staunch rockist, I regarded them as poisonous garnish (the sax on IQ’s Nomzamo in ’87 filled me with rage). All I needed to hear was saxophone being properly deployed. After Van der Graaf Generator opened the gateway, the sax and I were good to go. A bit of skronk is good for what ails ya.

Led Bib’s got two wild, battling saxophones capable of erecting walls of sound, then crashing right through them, raining blows down upon each other. The British quintet play jazz…of a sort. Their music marries the attack of rock with jazz’s freedom and exploration, which I admit reads like marketing copy, but that’s how I hear it. It’s two great tastes in one. The prominent Fender Rhodes tints everything with a bit of the’70s jazz-rock/Canterbury sound. It’s not ’70s-style fusion and it’s not techy like Zevious, for example.

They’ve made their own rules. They’re sometimes quite heavy, as on “Is That a Woodblock?”, where the bass growls away, or the menacing opening of “Little X”, one of the few tracks not composed by drummer Mark Holub. The tracks often start with an ultra-catchy head played at full-tilt. You can parp along with them, if you’re given to parping. But Led Bib don’t milk their themes; they get on with it. Where they’ll go after establishing the head is always open to question. On “Shapes and Sizes” the band races each other like a grid of F1 cars heading towards the first corner. They strike a more placid mood on the brief “Hollow Ponds,” or on the occasionally mournful “Winter.” Sometimes the whole endeavour collapses, and you’re left wondering how they’re going to claw themselves out of the pit they’ve fallen into, as on “Moth Dilemma.” But they always do.

Like their Mercury Prize-shortlisted Cuneiform debut Sensible Shoes, Bring Your Own brims with action and adventure. It’s a blast, in short. With duel-to-the-death saxes, great riffs, and crack musicianship in service of exciting, frequently weird, songs, what’s not to love? If you don’t like saxophones, well, grow up! You’re missing out on some stirring modern music.