New Sound Now // An online music show and blog

I generally don’t like reviews. That’s not to say I don’t do them, because I do. I write lots of reviews. But I don’t like doing it. Reviews, to me, should say more than whether something is of a certain quality. I find those kinds of things a rather large waste of time. However, sometimes I feel a record is worth talking about so much that I want to talk about only it. What’s a column called that only talks about a single record? A review. It’s an inescapable devil, so I’m going to ratify it. When I go out of my way to review an album, it’s because the music is so great I want everyone to hear it. Thereby, I’m appending the word “good” on the end of “music” as you can see on the title above. What you read below is an analysis of some good music. There’s no argument needed preluding the reasons why it is good. It just is.

So.

Throw Me The Statue - Moonbeams

I’m staring at a topless woman. She has just left the edge of a dock—she has been pushed by another topless woman. The other topless woman has a towel loosely draped on her head. The first topless woman, the one that’s falling, she’s arcing her back so that she can hit the water with some composure. But she’s, like, two feet away from the water. No way is that landing going to be graceful. But she’s smiling. Her entire near-naked body seems to be shining with the glee of a summer’s holiday. Her problem is not a problem, and her happiness is reflected in my happiness and, perhaps, all our happinesses.

My job is to explain to you why Throw Me The Statue’s Moonbeams, a near-solo embark of Scott Reitherman of Seattle, is a wonderful 50.1 minutes (itunes has destroyed my sense of seconds) of music. If it isn’t clear, the first reason to buy this album is because of the two topless women on the cover. This isn’t a chauvinist thing; far from it. You likely won’t get any sexual satisfaction out of it. What you will get is a sense that the album you just bought isn’t being censored in any way. Like the breasts on the cover, it’s free. And free-sounding music is—irony of all ironies—one of the hardest things to come by in the later part of this decade.

Yes, this album is largely about sex. Titles like “Young Sensualists,” “Your girlfriend’s Car,” and “This Is How We Kiss” are not exactly Reaganisms. But the sex portrayed on the album is hardly the fucking sort; this is playful, rhythmic, and soft-lit sex. It’s the same kind of sex that seems to emanate from indie rock en masse, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d suggest that Scott had been listening to a little too much Broken Social Scene. The rolling guitars and light drums don’t dissuade this theory, either.

But this album is about freedom. Sex finds its way in there, because sex is one of the greatest expressions of freedom we’ve got. But more importantly, this album is musically free. It’s difficult to put in words, but the semi-random swoops, dips, accelerations, out-of-nowhere falsettos, and fast-paced clapping sessions (at least in my head) all lead the listener (at least, me) to a place many sets of music don’t often arrive. I actually felt like I’d been on an improvised journey of the various facets of modern rock, and I’d been given all the various feelings one can experience, but at odd places. I didn’t necessarily feel excited at the crescendos, and I didn’t really feel down in the slow parts. Moonbeams left me tumbled, but in a way I appreciated and will ante up for again.

Vocally, Scott sounds like BSS alum Jason Collett, except he’s not trying to be a country singer. His voice is blanketed by fuzz, even though many of the instruments aren’t. It creates a cool split that would (I suppose) sound great in a phone ad. It’s all very catchy, and it’s all I’ve been able to listen to for the past 72 hours. Because of that, I might be biased. Reviewers never are the best people to get music advice from. Of course we like it; we wouldn’t be writing about something if we didn’t (at least in some way. I suppose people who give negative reviews for a living enjoy that, too).

Moonbeams is the kind of indie rock that one can have playing in nearly any situation, but it’s not one you can show to everyone. This is directly related to the topless girls. Your mom might like Feist, and might find the sounds of Throw Me The Statue acceptable, but don’t show her the album cover. It’s not “socially acceptable.” This, of course, makes it 1000 percent cooler, but you already knew that, didn’t you? Because even though you’re not buying this album for the cover (and should naturally never buy an album based on its cover, because that’s shallow and sheepish), it certainly doesn’t hurt when it’s really good. Somehow, acceptable-by-authority has never been a criticism of indie rock. Used to be, if your parents liked a band, they sucked. But Moonbeams won’t piss anyone off. It will make them happy, and it’ll make you happy. And if we’ve learned anything about the absolute takeover indie rock has had over the music scene in the last eight years, it’s that being genuine is far more enjoyable in the long term than being a rock star dick, even if that makes you less of a rock star (and, by extension, less of a rawker audience member), and that’s completely acceptable.

I generally don’t like reviews. That’s not to say I don’t do them, because I do. I write lots of reviews. But I don’t like doing it. Reviews, to me, should say more than whether something is of a certain quality. I find those kinds of things a rather large waste of time. However, sometimes I feel a record is worth talking about so much that I want to talk about only it. What’s a column called that only talks about a single record? A review. It’s an inescapable devil, so I’m going to ratify it. When I go out of my way to review an album, it’s because the music is so great I want everyone to hear it. Thereby, I’m appending the word “good” on the end of “music” as you can see on the title above. What you read below is an analysis of some good music. There’s no argument needed preluding the reasons why it is good. It just is.

So.

The Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust

Every review of every Raveonettes release goes the same way. The band takes Buddy Holly-like lyrics and sexes them up using distortion and zombie-style vocals, creating this fantastic mixture of sleaze, innocence, and nostalgia. They take a surfing film and they paint a coat of pure fuck all over it. Every review explains this because the Raveonettes have done such a great job of explaining themselves. Music journalists often pride themselves on piecing together the etymology of a band, but the Raveonettes have laid it out so clearly that it becomes difficult to break it down further. They are Buddy Holly’s “Let’s Rave On” mixed with the Ronettes. Variances bubble up along the way, but essentially it’s that simple.

I owe the Raveonettes much, let me tell you. Whip It On, their EP from 2002, was transmogrifying for me. It didn’t change how I saw music so much as how I saw the world. Up until then, everything was present-tense. The now was the cheap magazine subscription we all got suckered into, and could never figure out exactly how to escape. Whip It On was the scene in every great b-movie where the bad ass car is introduced. No, it wasn’t the time. It was the car. Whip It On was the bad ass car that I didn’t know I was needed to rescue me from the merciless sleaze of the now.

The first full-length, Chain Gang of Love (2003), was a major label debut and, while it felt similar to Whip It On, it was clearly cleaned up for the mass market. This was my first time experiencing what the system could do to a band. I found precise moments where I could tell the band compromised. Pretty In Black (2005), the next full length, furthered this slide into mainstream sounds to an even greater extent, losing their fuzz entirely and coming across as a throwback band rather than the grayscale motorcade of destruction I knew they could be. It wasn’t that I was losing my precious Raveonettes. I understood that bands go in different directions for any number of reasons (the lack of fuzz was apparently due to their equipment being stolen), and it wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy these records, but neither gave me cause to realize that there was a law in which to fight (even if the law would inevitably win) like Whip It On did.

That brings us to Lust Lust Lust, a revitalization in both sound and philosophy for the band. The fuzz is amplified, as if to remind us how much it was missed. The songs are back down to the three and a half minute mark for the most part. There’s no cutesy covers to be found. This is the full length that should have come after Whip It On. Propulsive yet shifty, direct yet decidedly in the shadows, Lust Lust Lust is the fuck record for the irony-tinged past that never really existed.

“Ally Walk With Me” starts off with a sneer of guitar warm up, scuffing our ears with dust, reminding us that rock music is supposed to be the bad kind of fun. It’s the most telling track, because it’s so laid-back compared to most of Lust Lust Lust. “Ally Walk With Me” takes its time, drawing you into the world, removing consideration and complication. “Dead Sound,” the shoegaze-boogie single I’ve been waiting for since 2003, is built for the post-ironic dance floors of 2008. “Blush” reminds us of the mangled morals in this world: “I can’t keep you/I can’t hold you tight/I can’t love you/see, despite my hurtful ways/I can still make you blush.” “You Want the Candy” gazes with one eye at your childhood innocence and, with the other, winks at your crotch. Finally, “Blitzed” rolls out the Let’s Rave On-style surf-rock, reminding us that there has been a journey between the never that the Raveonettes look back to, and the now they inevitably haunt.

Lust Lust Lust is both saccharine and bloody, hugged by a wall of noise so encompassing speakers barely give it justice. The easy mixtures of reference points may be easy to trace, but that makes it no less futuristic in Lust Lust Lust’s view of the past.