Bird Names - Recession Vacation [Really Coastal]

Recession Vacation is Chicago's self-described "young adult contemporary" ensemble Bird Names' second cassette on Really Coastal this year. Returning with 9 more songs of their brand of borderline twee pop concocted from a bevy of instruments, this cassette seems a little more homemade and smeary.
"The Squeeze" kicks things off with a shambling mini-orchestra of keyboard melodies, strummed acoustic guitar, jaunty drums, slide whistles, idiophones, and fuzzy guitar leads. The piece shifts from part to part with abandon always returning to the central catchy melody, starting the album off on a strong foot. "Hauntings like Harpoons" uses a programmed drumbeat, a couple of opposed keyboard melodies and a couple more layers of guitar, slide and other, on top of that. The band manages to keep the melodic heart of the song in focus the whole time despite the loosey-goosiness of the arrangement. The arrangement of "Another Faceless Puller of the Pharaoh's Great Stones" is a little more restrained. Beginning rather skeletal at the beginning of each verse and gradually expanding into a melodious cacophony with cymbal clangs and all. "Crumbling Hand" is the last song of the side and the dude singing sounds just like Calvin Johnson. Musically it's not too Beat Happening though. The song is anchored with a nice slide guitar lick and rambles along with a twitchy energy.
The title track opens the B-side with a Vince Guaraldi/It's Christmastime Charlie Brown vibe. A jaunty acoustic guitar and piano duet for a little while before a cooing choir of voices join in. There's a glockenspiel solo later which is followed by a great warbly bridge/restating of the initial melody. The instrumental "Key West" is the shortest song here at about a minute and a half. It's got a keyboard set on the bossanova drumbeat and invests itself fully into mircrowaved "Latin" grooves. Bird Names' previous Really Coastal tape closed with a fantastic song that towered above the rest called "Taxicabs and Bicycles" so I was hoping there might be another song like that on this tape. There is (yes!) and it even tops "Taxicabs." "If I Had a Carriage" is probably the most straightforward Bird Names song I've heard. It's two minutes of unadulterated pop goodness, addicting as it should be. The song's central refrain, which begins with "If I had a carriage..." is the star of the show here with just voices, handclaps and an acoustic guitar, and Bird Names wisely don't diverge from it too often. There's not much to say about it other than it's just a wonderful pop song. The next track "On With the Show" sounds like an old NES Mario game; an instrumental comprised of a ratatat-ing drum machine and a bunch of bouncing keyboards. Finale, "Where Sheep Graze" gets freaky. Starting with an acoustic guitar arpeggio that could have maybe been from some epic folk-metal album, then shifting to some refrain sung by creepy forest creatures. The track changes up plenty of times from there developing into a rather nice song with various bits of slide guitarwork, agitated keyboards and a trumpet. A grandiose ending for a sweet little tape.
The blue pro-dubbed tape is still available from Really Coastal and comes with a hilarious cover as you can see.

Bird Names – Sings the Browns [Really Coastal]

A neat a little tape by Chicago band Bird Names on Malibu’s Really Coastal imprint.
This tape is incredibly jaunty and that is established quite immediately with the first song “Nature’s Over.” Scrappy guitar riffs, clusters of casio and a twee choir of voices. “Living Longer” gets twisty with a vaguely eastern melody line, pseudo-sitar and galloping percussion. In classic style, “Defined Stijls” cools things down for third track. The slower tempo allows for a more intricately zonked arrangement around the middle of the piece. A number of instruments push the limits of being discordant while still remaining pop. One of the early highlights. Elsewhere on the side, “Natural Weeds” ups the jauntiness even further with a march-like chorus. “Oh, Narcotopic Fantasy” begins, as its name implies, rather fantastically with keyboards, violin and glockenspiel. The track is notable for its complete absence of percussion; it just kinda drifts along ending in supremely euphoric style with a few brass instruments flowing freely. “I Had a Girl” by contrast focuses pretty strictly on percussiveness, though still creates one of the sweetest melodies of the side.
In my opinion, the second side is where things really congeal. “Days Elevated” is off to a good start with a crunchy Velvets-esque guitar riff. The track just barely hangs together during its two ramshackle minutes. “People Should Get More Aware” reminds me a lot of Deerhoof back when they were putting out good records 6 or 7 years ago. Noisy and driven but still full of kinetic pop touches. The Deerhoof similarity really comes out on “Production” as well. There’s a repeated circular melody for a while, before a breakdown into a lovely little march that grows in humble bombast before reverting back to the original melody. One of my favorite songs on here, for sure. The second to last song, listed as “Baggage Garbe” on the tape and “Garbage Barge” on the j-card, is one of the most straightforwardly peppy things on here, even with a wood flute in tow. The song is anchored by a fantastic keyboard part near the end. Finale “Taxicabs and Bicycles” is my favorite song on here. Its sugary chorus goes furiously for the pop jugular. Bird Names even tries to make the song a bit difficult beginning with an extended dissonant breakdown and then throwing another one in the middle of the song but, damn, you can’t beat that chorus. It’s too sweetly melodic to be ignored and it has a nice lilt to it too. Overall it's a cool pop album, with plenty of hooks to spare.
Sings the Browns is available on LP and CD too so I have a ton of respect for Bird Names for putting out a cassette edition as well.
By the way, Bird Names has a brand new tape on Really Coastal too

Antique Brothers – Hot Shit [Really Coastal]/Antique Brothers – Sons of Winter [Abandon Ship]

A couple of fairly recent releases from LA’s Antique Brothers. The Hot Shit tape is from late last year while Sons of Winter came out early on in ’09. The former represents the jammier side of Antique Bros. with two side long tracks and the latter occupies the song-based realm.
SoCal’s Really Coastal label is one of the few tape labels dealing predominantly in song-based cassettes, thus, I was surprised to find a tape of two awesome live jams. “Hot Side” (I’ll get this out of the way, I really don’t get the whole Hot Shit/“Hot Side”/”Shit Side” naming thing, explain it to me if you can) begins with some free-plucks of banjo and a droning pump organ or something or other. Layers of mellow but still soaring electric guitar seep in. There’s a bit of super sparse percussion providing accents in a really effective way. It almost just sounds like incidental sounds of a hand hitting a guitar while playing. A steady hand drum pulse starts up and the track just swelllllllllls with sound. The overall vibe is super mellow and melodic but there’s some inconspicuously noisy guitar eruptions taking place a bit further back in the field sounds. I really like a portion with a clean, round-toned slide guitar mashed up against a few bits of squealing feedback. This tape is full of tasteful, well-put together contrasts. That this is a live track makes it all the more impressive because everyone playing shows a bit of restraint and makes every sound count. There’s some great percussion clatter reminiscent of that Albero Rovesciato tape I reviewed awhile back, where the percussionist(s) really starts cutting everything up and somehow maintains continuity with the track’s easygoing vibes through all the metallic clangs. After a passage of sustained guitar (there’s gotta be an ebow at work here somewhere I think) and chimes, a few jungle animal-esque shrieks and cries poke through just as the track fades from sight before a drum outro closes everything down for good. It’s a real effortless listen, and it at least sounds like an effortless jam with everyone grooving on the same frequency.
The shambling, smooth vibe of the first side is replaced with a bit more tension on “Shit Side.” For the first two minutes or so there’s a great organ/guitar match-up with an over-so-slight touch of dissonance putting an odd but pleasurable strain on the music. It’s really fantastically pulled off and that concept is built on and reworked throughout. The track doesn’t quite match the fluidity of the previous side and I think the drums are a little out of place in this less rhythm-intensive context but there are some excellently unsettling bits of cymbal noise and so forth. It really is the guitar that anchors the piece, which returns to a repeated arpeggio that calls back to early Godspeed You! Black Emperor stuff. About a third of the ways through, things cohere wonderfully, getting noisy and very un-soothing in a magnificent manner and unfortunately cuts out a bit too early for my taste. Not too worry though, it’s followed up by another noisy, but this time free jazz-ish, bleating before changing, yet again, to an almost pseudo tropical type passage. The piece floats along in dronier waters for awhile before another excellent guitar/organ bit——they are certainly the stars of the show here. Just when you think it’s all gonna be a quiet come down, the band gets free jazz on everyone’s ass for the last two minutes. A pretty great tape overall, sometimes long improv jams can get boring and this tape is anything but that. Worth checking out for sure.
The Sons of Winter CD-r is quite a bit different, though similarities are certainly evident. The differences being mainly: not made in a live environment and pretty much all the tracks are built around older acoustic guitar recordings if my memory serves. Opener “An Early Frost” features acoustic guitar plus layers of keyboards before distortion and drums are laid on pretty thick in the last bit. “The Woods” picks up where “Frost” left off, acoustic and dirty electric guitars and drums with scattered notes of harmonica. The drums seem a little unnecessary here because all the layers of guitars are so locked in rhythmically that drums end up resting on top so to speak rather than forming the core of the track. It’s quite a cool song nonetheless, augmented by some froggy, effected vocals creating an intended (I’m assuming) doom-folk vibe. “Smog Blankets” actually sounds quite a lot like its moniker. A pretty sprawling track of drones and dispersed guitar runs, percussive hits and synth noise. “LA December” is a pleasant, all-too-$hort track with a charming, loopy, almost seasick melody. “Fields of White Stretch Eternal” is probably my favorite here. All the elements congeal so beautifully; quickly paced acoustic playing, drums and a lovely bed of sounds of various sources. An unassumingly stunning piece and heavily reverbed vocals are an excellent touch near the end. “Father Winter” pushes acoustic guitar front and center and then fills every crevice of silence with sound until around halfway through they re-evoke the doom-folk vibes again. “Crowning” takes a minute to get where it’s going but ultimately amounts to a rather beautiful piece of guitar, banjo and piano with distortion and drums added in later, as the Bros. are fond of doing. “Climbing the Glacier” pits acoustic and electric guitars against each other and finale “March On, Dire Wolves” features some absolutely killer electric guitar leads.
These two releases are interesting companion pieces because you definitely hear trademarks of Antique Brothers’ style in both but they are the fruits of much different creative processes. I prefer Hot Shit if only because these guys are just so good live (and because tapes rule,) but I could see some going the other direction as well.
The CD-r has some neat/cute art (especially on the back side) and an insert while the tape is pro-dubbed and comes in the awful/awesome offwhite colored shells that I thought they stopped making in the 80’s. Both releases are still available last I checked, and the tape is in a sizable edition of 125 and the CD-r is 100.

Lateral Hyetography – Some Girlzzz [Really Coastal]

This cassingle arrived mysteriously in my mail. I can only think of 3 other cassingles from the last couple years offhand (Ignatz, Barrabarracuda, U.S. Girls) and it’s an unappreciated/forgotten format I think. Although, I wonder what separates a c10 from a cassingle because there are lots of c10s flying about it seems. I believe the only more ponderous “ponderance” than that is, if someone you like asks you “if a tree falls in a forest does it make a sound?” will you begin to think they suck? If you have an answer and/or sub-question to my query, please get in touch cause I’d like to know. Alright, enough with all this meta-magnetic tape mumbo jumbo.
The subject of this review is Lateral Hyetography, and except for one person I know (Mike--weather science freak), Lateral Hyetography is infinitely better than actual hyetography. The tape came with a press release though I can’t seem to find it right now but this tape was made by one dude and it features two versions of “Some Girlzzz”, one on each side of course. I’ve had this song stuck in my head for the last 24 hours so I figured now is good time to get some words down. And it’s a good excuse to sit on my ass and listen to this tape over and over.
I’m partial to the version on the A-side. Though it begins unassuming enough, overdriven guitar, vocals and drum loop, this is actually a seriously epic pop song. Its magic is subtle. The track changes quite a lot without seeming like it. It takes one idea and stretches it as far as it can ago (I mean that in a good way, just so we’re clear). There’s a pseudo-verse/chorus thing at the beginning, “pseudo” cause it doesn’t really repeat or anything. This leads to an extended breakdown of just music which I don’t think you’re supposed to do if you wanna “make it” in the wonderful world of pop, but dude obviously doesn’t care about that—he’s just trying make me/you/everyone sing his song over and over. There’s a nice simple guitar riff that leads to my favorite a.k.a. the best part of the song. I’m pretty sure the guy is just singing “Some girls do-doo-di-do-dah-di-da-daowh”, what does it mean? I don’t know. But do I believe it? Hell yes I do, I should because I sung it to myself at least 200 times today. My only qualm with the song is that the casiobeat that accompanies the track is too loud and gets in the way a bit. The song is inherently propulsive and driven so I think a more subtle use of it would have benefited the track. It’s a very small problem to have though.
When you theoretically flip that shit, you’ll hear “Some Girlzzz” again but this time in acoustic mode. I prefer my pop full force and fuzzed so I take the A-side. This other version is no slouch though, the arrangement is similar with that casiobeat, acoustic guitar and multi-tracked vocals—d.i.y. Beach Boys-style. The guitar drops out and the breakdown consists of a bit of droney keyboard and extra vocal harmony. Even in this version with pretty easily discernible vocals I’m pretty sure he’s singing “do-doo-di-do-dah-di-da-daowh”. Go figure. The edge this version has on the previous side is live drumming that comes in for the last 1.5 minutes or so. It adds a nice, conclusive effect.
The tape is the first release by Really Coastal, though it looks like they just released their second tape—one by Antique Bros. With tapes by Theo Angell, Metal Rouge and more Lateral Hyetography on the way it looks like a label to keep an eye on. The first run of 95 sold out but it looks like there is a second pressing of Some Girlzzz available now at the barnbusting low price of $3.50. Tapes are pro-dubbed/pro-printed beauties housed with a fold-out j-card and bizarrely bizarre and thematic(?) cover art. Hours of enjoyment/3 dollars and 50 cents, I think you know what to do.
And since I’m sure you are dying to know and it was deemed important enough to credit on the j-card, the “cover model” is named Kathryn.