Album Review: Narrow Stairs



Narrow Stairs is quite like last year’s We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank by Modest Mouse. Both of these albums are follow-ups to very commercially successful releases (despite negative reactions from long time fans including myself). Both were highly anticipated. Like We Were Dead…, Narrow Stairs debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200. Both were released in springtime. Perhaps with hopes of their singles becoming summertime anthems? Finally, while neither are essential albums, they are both very good.

Narrow Stair‘s first single, “I Will Possess Your Heart” has been described by the band as a “ten minute Can jam”. It combines the breadth of “Transatlanticism” with the persistence of “Movie Script Ending”. If anything, the band picking an 8+ minute song as their first single is a statement against everything that Plans stood for. However, fans of the band’s softer side are not deprived on Narrow Stairs; tracks like “Your New Twin Sized Bed” seem to pick up almost exactly where “Brother’s On a Hotel Bed” left off.

“Long Division” brings a new calculation to a sound the band really hasn’t featured since Photo Album. For me, this alone makes picking on vinyl when Barsuk releases it in September.

The bottom line – This a good album by what is possibly the best songwriter/producer duo in music today. Overall, the album seems to be on middle ground much like Transatlanticism. Transatlanticism was on the verge of departure to Plans, whereas Narrow Stairs is a band’s sensible return to their roots with new tricks learned and new friends found along the way.

You can catch Death Cab for Cutie (along with most of the Ohmpark crew) on the last day of Bonnaroo. Too bad that you’ll have the sacrifice the end of Broken Social Scene‘s set to catch the beginning of Death Cab for Cutie. Their sets overlap by 30 minutes.

Death Cab For Cutie : Narrow Stairs : Long Division

Buy Narrow Stairs here

Death Cab For Cutie website

Album Review: Third

Portishead: Third

Let’s get this little bit of relevance out of the way without wit: it was in excess of 10 years between albums. (holy shit)

Do you ever catch yourself in the checkout line waiting on that old bag up front to finish writing her damn check, look over, see that candy you REALLY liked as a child, get instantly nostalgic, and buy it? Later, you take a big, feel-like-a-kid-again bite only to exclaim, “It used to taste better.”

Welcome to Portishead’s Third, at least for the first bite.

The first track “Silence” sets the tone for the entire album: despondent lyrics (as usual), haunting rhythms like you’re being chased in a dream (this record is not about kittens or sunshine or ice cream), and an abrupt ending (the shock treatment will continue.)

Beth portrays a very passionate, yet demure lady on “Hunter” and her vocals really stand out here – it’s everything you like about her voice and the years have not treated her poorly in this regard. It was here that I really started to settle into the album, only to be up-ended soon afterward.

“The Rip” is another exercise in surprising the listener. The first half of the song totally lulls you in with what I will characterize as 2 minutes that could pass as Stevie Nicks with Lindsey Buckingham (acoustic, mind you.) Then Bang! For the last half of the song you find yourself asking questions like, “How long can Beth really hold her breath? When did I start dancing? Is this the same song?” One of the true gems on the album, for certain.

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Album Review: This Piano Plays Itself

This Piano Plays Itself: This Piano Plays Itself

Local Atlanta’s This Piano Plays Itself just released a self-titled EP that takes the listener through an impressive variety of tones. Their “Explosions-in-the-Death-Cab” sound is highlighted by some electronic muscle that stretches their sound out of the worn idea of guitar rock, and although their influences may be somewhat transparent, this self-produced first effort shows huge potential. The opening minute or so of the record, a series of reverb-heavy synth loops, do a great job of setting up the first real song of the record, Day of Symmetry. From there, the record continues to display more guitar than synthy rock, but there are a couple electronic music-esque production tricks thrown in, like on Post Haste the Proletariat Waits and Awake/Asleep. Throwing on the reverb thick on both the guitars and vocals give the shoe-gaze elements of this band’s sound an other worldly quality. Having seen the band live a couple times, the record surprised me by accomplishing a more calculated and in the pocket feel alongside their normally raucous and Godspeed!-type spastic parts, exemplified in the closing track of the record, These are Segments of Revolving and Revolting.

The record throws some serious wall of noise guitar bashing in with the peripheral electronic experimentation while not feeling gimmicky, or as if searching for filler. The biggest problems with this record are minor and the same as any other young band: transparent influences and production values. Impressive in its own right, this is a self-produced first recording, which rarely, if ever, turn out this well. This band’s thick sound shows huge potential and I am psyched to hear them move forward with more tunes.

This Piano Plays Itself : Day Of Symmetry

This Piano Plays Itself : Post Haste, The Prolitariat Waits

This Piano Plays Itself Myspace

Album Review: You Know People I Know People

Morning State: You Know People I Know People

Morning State finally released their debut full-length album last week after having to scrap the first recording due to their label collapsing. You can read all about that Yankee Hotel Foxtrot-esque storyline here. The album released is actually from a second, separate recording session earlier this year with Asa Leffer (The Whigs, Dark Meat, The Pendletons) at DARC in Athens, GA over an 11 day span.

The album opens with “Sad Is When I’m Driving” and is the perfect intro track to this band. At moments it is melodic and reserve, others it is rocking hard delivering the best of its collective members. Sweet and concise guitar riffs, driving rhythms on the drums, straightforward, catchy hooks from vocalist Russ Ledford, and a tease of their bottled up potential to jam out. The album builds up momentum with the short second track, “Hurry, Hurry”, before they drop one of the obvious hit songs, “Never So Strange.” The version of this track seems so much more laid back and tentative from what I remember of it live. It helps with the overall flow of the album, but something about the song itself seems lacking.

“Grown Up (Atlanta)” is up next and is my favourite song on this record. I usually go back and listen to this one again every time I put You Know People in my CD player. It channels everything I enjoy about bands like The Foo Fighters and Queens Of the Stone Age. The jam at the end of the next track,”On A Walk,” really sells the guitar work on this album. Evey riff they employ seems to be the right decision for the particular feel they are trying achieve.

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