News

Sounds

SIMON JOYNER

" Here Come The Balloons "

Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes is a modern, Midwestern folk prodigy who looks like a little baby deer to boot, but please let us introduce you to Joyner, his Nebraska savant elder. Half as histrionic but twice as literate and evocative, the songwriter's Dylan-on-codeine intonation and voice cracks open a creaky door to the unfinished basement of Americana. The weighty, life-questioning b-side " They Say Man Cannot Fly " (" The accident my mother should have prevented " sings Joyner) is the winner here, made all the more eerie by subtle guitar, whistling and what sounds like a cow-in-a-can. Moo-dy.

Matthew Fritch

The Vanity Set / Sally Norvell

" Jump In The Grave / Exit Music (For A Film) "

Winter: and as a young man's (or woman's) fancy turns to thoughts of staying in bed for as long as humanly possible, what could be nicer than a formidably arty (some would say pretentious) seven-inch from a cabaret bars of New York's Lower East Side? The Vanity Set, a loose collective (aren't they all?) based around James Sclavunos from Nick Cave's band The Bad Seeds, offer " Jump In The Grave ", a wayward croon which even the press release describes as shambolic. But Radiohead completists, and anyone else who likes a weird cover, will be inexorably drawn to gloomstress Sally Norvell's, er, " interpretation " of " Exit Music (For A Film) ". Wobbly, wild and hysterical, it's what dark nights and damp rooms were made for.

Brother JT

" Hear The Waves EP "

From the days when Lou Reed was on autopilot, comes a reminder of the ill effects that soporific drugs can have on musical ability. Brother JT (not a real monk) strums away in geological time on this none-more-lentissimo aural toothache. There is no indication on this 7-inch that it should be played at 33rpm, probably because it was recorded at 16rpm and would sound painfully slow at 78. I ... can't ... go ... on ...

Brother JT

The three songs here - Hear The Waves, Closer To You and Soul's On Ice - are spare and spiritual, reminiscent of imagined Brian Wilson demos.

Broken Dog

" Radios "

If quiet really has become the new subversive, Broken Dog's Clive Painter and Martine Roberts are probably right up there on Homeland Security's list of foreign troublemakers. Robert's sultry, spellbinding voice - double tracked on " Radios " - evokes the glory days of of Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval, as Painter wraps his partner in sensuous, gauzy fretwork. Turning the flame down even lower, " Silent Mostly " wanders through the sinister world of soundtrack guru Angelo Badalamenti, where every dreary coffee shop has a serial killer lurking out back near the dumpster.
-Jud Cost