CD REVIEWS

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

By PJH Staff

Veckatimest
GRIZZLY BEAR
Grizzly Bear’s new album Veckatimest is gonna be in all the cool kids’ music libraries this year, and rightfully so, because it’s really good and appeals to a wide variety of musical palates.

Psychadelic folk, Grizzly Bear left something to be desired on its last album, Yellow House, that was too lo-fi, ethereal, and jumbled for many music lovers but Veckatimest is more syncopated, better-produced and really nice to listen to. The album, named after an Island off the coast of Massachussetts, was on-time for Grizzly Bear’s evolving, much talked-about sound.

Some of the songs wander, but such is Grizzly Bear’s nature.
“Two Weeks” is the catchiest and, well, best track on the album, while “Foreground” is the loveliest of the mellow side of Veckatimest’s musical spectrum.
Veckatimest is good for dinner music, making out and thoughtful sits in the living room with a book.
–Henry Sweets

Actor
ST. VINCENT
A crush on Annie Clark is inevitable. The 26-year-old, one-time Polyphonic Spree chanteuse shreds guitar and layers progressive melodies over classical, somewhat cinematic, compositions. Her voice imagines a sweet English country girl, but her songwriting belies a Texan indie rock scene upbringing, making frequent use of distortion and directional changes in melody or rhythm.

And not that it matters, but she’s also sexy – in that hipster-but-not-too-serious, Brooklyn-resident way. Going by the nomenclature St. Vincent  – after the hospital where Dylan Thomas died – Clark released her second solo album earlier this year. Actor collects a decade of disparate bands from my shelves, including XTC, Badly Drawn Boy and Feist. It’s somewhat intangible, metaphysical in the Paul Auster way, which also means it has and intuition and familiarity, explained perhaps by the fact that she created the album first on a computer, then printed the notes and learned with her band how to play them.
– Matthew Irwin

Coconuts, Plenty of Junk Food
COCOROSIE
Somewhere between Mars and Jupiter is a place where ghosts of jazz singers fuse to daydreams of little alien girls. That place is where CocoRosie was born. Actually, Coco and Rosie are sisters, one born in Iowa and one in Hawaii, to a shamanistic, Native American father and compulsively transient art-teacher mother. Their new EP, Coconuts, Plenty of Junk Food, takes their sound to a better place, with more distinct beats that add some spine to their ethereality.

The sound is a bit more accessible, but equally lullaby-like, and still might be intolerable to the faint at heart. The sisters sing in buttery, child-like voices over what seem to be horn loops, organs, strings, and keys that often come from kids toy instruments, harps, guitars or more exotic sources. Unfortunately, Coconuts, Plenty of Junk Food was self-released and available only at Coco Rosie shows or via Internet downloading.
– Henry Sweets

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CD REVIEWS | Planet JH News Article: General Music Arts and Culture

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