Ted Leo And The Pharmacists - The Brutalist Bricks (Matador)

"The new millennium is tough, for some more than others, what a ridiculous understatement," snarls Ted Leo on "Ativan Eyes," a document of economic class struggle set over bouncy pop punk from his latest "The Brutalist Bricks." The song is a catchy energetic piece of agitprop that would make a perfect soundtrack for a sunny day, even if the subject matter is nothing to smile about. Yet that dichotomy is what has defined Ted Leo throughout his career. He makes snappy addictive pop songs fashioned out of a patchwork of punk, folk, reggae, ska and Thin Lizzy-infected rock and roll. His music is like a shot of adrenaline that comes in handy during long drives or when you need that extra push at the gym, while his lyrics are thought-provoking nuggets of political and personal discourse. Leo has been called an idealist from time to time, and I often wonder if that isn't more because of the often lively disposition of his music than it is a reflection of his politics and lyrics. But then again, what else do you call a guy who has the red/black anarcho-syndicalist flag planted in the middle of his lyric sheet with the words "The Truth Is In The Garden" printed over it?

Following the somewhat disappointing "Living With The Living," it was hard not to approach "The Brutalist Bricks" with trepidation. As one reviewer wrote, it was possible that "Living" marked the beginning of the sunset years in Leo's much respected musical career. Those fears are quickly laid to rest as soon as the needle hits the groove on "A Mighty Sparrow." The song kicks off with Leo's distinctive voice calling out "when the cafe doors exploded, I reacted to, reacted to you." Soon thereafter the Pharmacists explode as well, sounding as lean and tight as ever. It's a good sign that heralds a return to form for Leo, which continues throughout an album full of solid bangers.

For the next 40 minutes, with the exception of the pleasant, but slight, "One Polaroid A Day," and the confounding "Tuberculoids Arrive In Hop," Leo and the Pharmacists lay down some of the finest pop punk in years. There isn't anything here that we haven't heard before from Leo, but that is okay. The problem with "Living," was that Leo attempted too many different individual styles of music, and in the end it came off as music tourism. This isn't to say that there aren't some great moments to be found on that album, but if I want to hear reggae I will listen to Lee "Scratch" Perry, not Ted Leo. On the other hand, if I want to hear pop punk, I can't think of anyone better to provide than Ted Leo, and provide he does with "The Brutalist Bricks." From the Oi Oi of "Where Was My Brain?" to the indie/garage/classic-rock mashup of "Last Days," Leo and the Pharmacists fully satisfy.

Two songs stand out and more than satisfy, they are goddamned spectacular. The first is "Mourning in America," which draws a direct line from the racial politics of Ronald Reagan's "southern strategy" to the "tea-baggers" and "birthers" of today. Leo's voice is at its most urgent here, while the Pharmacists play with all the requisite sound and fury befitting the song's subject matter. It is an angry and desperate piece that exposes the racism seated deep in the breast of America's right-wing, who increasingly resemble those white-hooded terrorists of old. Leo calls them out for being "long manipulated and willfully dumb." One of the great modern tragedies is that while there is plenty to be angry about, the real enemies, corporations and their bought and paid for politicians, manipulate peoples' fear, causing them to act against their own interests. So what else do you call poor foreclosed white folks who shows up to town hall meetings screaming that Obama is a Nazi for wanting to provide them with health care?

The other song is "Bottled Up In Cork," which begins with the same fury as "Mourning," with Leo singing about a "peace keeping" debate on the floor of the U.N. The song quickly turns from the political into a personal travelogue. The music bears the melodicism of a world traveller imparting insight. One gets the sense from the song that Leo loves the world he lives in, loves to explore it and loves the people he meets along the way, but that the misdeeds of Washington and Wall Street, which threatens those places and people, are never far from his mind. One line stands out in particular; "a little goodwill goes a mighty long way." If there is any expression to sum up Leo's approach to music and politics that would be it. Leo has always come in goodwill, even when he is singing about the atrocious realities of our time, and "The Brutalist Bricks" is another fine example of his agitprop pop.

"A Mighty Sparrow" live on Jimmy Fallon


"Mourning In America"


"Bottled Up In Cork"

The National - "Terrible Love"

Regardless of how very accessible and somewhat popular this band is, The National completely won me over last year at Pitchfork with their performance. I have admittedly been anxiously awaiting their new album, "High Violet," which drops May 11. They debuted a new track last night on Jimmy Fallon called "Terrible Love." It takes a minute to get going, but once it does it more than satisfies.

R.I.P. Mark Linkous 1962-2010

"Gold Days" is one of my favorite songs of all time, the album it was from, "It's A Wonderful Life," is a masterpiece as well. When my first daughter was born, this was the song I most wanted her to hear. I will miss you Mark. From the first Sparklehorse album to your excellent collaboration last year with Fennesz, you made haunting, beautiful and emotionally resonant music.

Titus Andronicus - The Monitor (XL Recordings)

New Jersey's Titus Andronicus' debut album "The Airing of Grievances" was the best bit of ramshackle, heart on the sleeve, basement-punk since the Replacement's "Tim." Mixing the righteous fire of the Clash, the loser piss-drunk heartland noise of the 'Mats and a dash of Celtic punk ala the Pogues, Titus Andronicus threatened to be one of those bands that really matters. So expectations are fairly high for "The Monitor," the band's sophomore followup.

Musicians typically do one of three things on their sophomore release; a) deliver more of the same, b) expand their sound every so slightly without upsetting their basic template, or c) overambitiously veer off into a new direction entirely. For their sophomore record, Titus Andronicus choose a little bit from column b and a lot from column c.

The album kicks off with "A More Perfect Union," which boasts the line "tramps like us, baby we were born to die." Lead singer Patrick Stickles' invocation of the Boss is more than a little prescient, since the fellow Jerseyite's influence runs throughout "The Monitor" as much, or more so, than any other. Later in the album Stickles declares "I'm destroying everything that wouldn't make me more like Bruce Springsteen." Unfortunately, epic "Thunder Road"-sized songs are not really what these guys do best. That doesn't stymie the band's ambition. Hell, even the album title is ambitious. Named after the USS Monitor, the U.S. Navy's first ironclad warship used by the Union during the Civil War, the album is inspired by that conflict and the ongoing unrest in the United States ever since. The band throws in quotes from Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis and Walt Whitman throughout the album to further the point. Stickles has explained their raison d'être as such:

"it is a record about how the conflicts that led our nation into that great calamity remain unresolved, and the effect that this ongoing division has on our personal relationships and our behavior and how they’re all out to get us (or maybe not?) and yadda yadda yadda.”

The dismissiveness at the end of that statement reflects the dichotomy of Titus Andronicus; one minute they are earnestly attempting to understand, and decry, the injustice of the world they live in, and the next they are throwing up their arms, screaming 'fuck it!' That vacillation is part of what makes the band so enjoyable. They aren't trendfucking hipsters who are too cool to be unironic, nor are they overly earnest self-righteous sourpusses. The problem with "The Monitor," though, is that musically that vacillation just isn't half as interesting or fun as you want it to be.

The band burns through the first four tracks without blinking an eye and it sounds as if they are on course for another winner of a record. Eric Harm's drums bash and pound with proper aplomb, guitarists Stickles and David Robbins throw off memorable guitar licks right and left, while Ian Graetzer's pulsating bass gives the band a strong core from which to fight. Battle cries like "The enemy is everywhere!" and "You will always be a loser!" define the songs and demand to be screamed joyfully at the top of the lungs. The band's golden run culminates with "Richard II," the best song on the album. The song is a punk rock Celtic ho-down as good, or maybe even better, than the best Pogues song. It's a militant revenge fantasy that finds Stickles declaring "There's only one dream that I keep close, and it's the one of my hand at your throat," and only seconds later claiming "I will not deny my humanity, I'll be rolling in it like a pig in feces." Dichotomy? Yes, but one that is easily understood by anyone who grew up listening to the Clash, or ever wore a Che Guevara t-shirt and meant it.

As the album proceeds, those epic "Thunder Road"-sized songs start piling up. The problem is that, with the exception of the amazing "Four Score and Seven," the songs just aren't that memorable. The nearly nine-minute "A Pot In Which To Piss," has moments of real brilliance, and certainly the final minutes of the song are some of the finest on the album, but no matter how many times I listen to it, I just can't really remember much about it once it ends. "Theme from "Cheers" is a celebration of drinking and loserdom that suffers from sounding a little too much like a generic barroom anthem. "To Old Friends and New," a duet with Jenn Wassner of Wye Oakis, continues the band's quest for blackout drunk with an attempt to fashion a closing time hymn. It is as slow and deliberate as a drunk's steps toward the couch at the end of the night. While it isn't a bad song, it just kind of brings the party way down, and again does nothing to differentiate itself from similarly situated songs. The album ends with "The Battle of Hampton Roads," a fourteen-minute epic that sounds like an old Bright Eyes outtake, but only reminds you that back in the day Connor Oberst did this kind of thing a lot better. Stickles' lyrics are properly indignant and self-loathing enough, but again the music just sounds like a generic epic rock anthem.

The lone exception, as noted before, is "Four Score and Seven," here the band takes that epic-song template and loads it full of moments of real inspiration. Beginning with strummed guitars, mournful fiddle and harmonica, the song builds to a gorgeous fanfare of horns and percussion before the band explodes at the halfway point with another punk-inspired war cry that would make Joe Strummer proud of his children. The song proves that the band has it in them to write nine-minute epics, but its shining brilliance only underscores the drab blandness of every other lengthy track here.

In the end, "The Monitor" is a picture of Titus Andronicus shooting for the moon and coming up just a little too short. One can't write off the album as sophomore slump, in fact the problem is just the opposite - too many ideas, too much ambition. As a result the album's second half is just kind of a mess, and not the ramshackle mess that one hopes for from a band that was so clearly poised to take up the mantle of the Replacements circa "Let It Be" and "Tim." Oddly enough, because of its flashes of genius and excellent first half, "The Monitor" will make the listener anxious for more from Titus Andronicus. These guys clearly have what it takes to be at the top of the indie world in them, and one can't fault them from thinking big, but they also need to play to their strengths, which are plenty, rather than chasing the shadow of that other, more well-known, Jersey giant.

Stream the entire album at the band's MySpace page

Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me (Drag City)

Joanna Newsom unleashed her three album long "Have One On Me" last week to nearly universal acclaim. Interestingly enough, critics received advance copies of this behemoth only a week prior to its release. Now normally I wouldn't come right out and question the legitimacy of my fellow writers' praise, or their comprehension of what they are writing about, but I kind of find it hard to believe anyone really got a grip on this overly dense work in time to declare it the masterpiece that it is being hailed as. Barring someone in a bunker at Pitchfork listening to this album repeatedly for seven days straight, their ridiculously high score of 9.2 seems more than a little suspect. Some critics have tried to downplay the length of the album. 'It is only 18 songs!' some cry in defense. What they neglect to mention is that song lengths average 7 to 8 minutes. Furthermore, Newsom isn't exactly a verse chorus verse songwriter, the songs either meander or change like the weather, so it takes many repeated listens to determine the merit of any given song.

Having said that, what makes what I am about to write any more legitimate? Nothing really, other than I waited an extra week before I took on the task of writing a review of this unwieldy album, and I can assure you, my gentle readers, that I dedicated ever minute of free listening time to this album, which I might add was sometimes an unbearable task. Whether or not that makes me better qualified to tackle "Have One On Me" is for you to decide, but let's be honest and admit that probably no one is qualified at this point in this record's release to declare it a failure or a masterpiece.

Let me begin by saying that I thought Newsom's "Ys" was one of the best albums of the last decade. It was epic, complicated and gorgeous every step of the way. So I come to "Have One On Me" as a fan of Newsom. Lord knows there are plenty of detractors. Some people hate that warbly voice of hers, some can't stand the renaissance fair affectations, some think she is too obscure or wordy. I am not one of those people. Fortunately for most of her critics, the warbly voice is almost entirely absent on "Have One On Me." If there is one thing I can say for certain about the album it is that Newsom has learned to sing.

What of everything else though? Well, in a nutshell this is an album that eschews the epic scope of "Ys" as well as the simple digestible nuggets of "Milk-Eyed Mender," for something more difficult to get a grasp on, something more languid and, at times, frustrating. Some songs feature understated orchestral and band arrangements, some just Newsom at her piano or harp.

Broken up into three discs, the strongest tracks come early in the program. "Easy" and the title track bear a slight resemblance to the tracks on "Ys" except where those tracks were full orchestral affairs, these a chamber pieces and not nearly as epic in scope. They are still slightly knotty arrangements that need to be unpacked over time, but they aren't as dense, or, in the end, as rewarding as the tracks on "Ys." Yes, they are pleasing, but they seem like a degraded copy of what Newsom has done before. "'81" follows and is an immediate standout. Essentially just Newsom and her harp, the piece sounds lusher and more romantic than her chamber arrangements. As with the best Newsom songs, there is an ache in her voice and music that underscores the delivery of lyrics centered around a quest for innocence. It's gorgeous stuff and a perfect Newsom song.

The album's real highlight is "Good Intentions Paving Company." Here Newsom draws upon early American composition to craft a rousing ragtime motif for the song's backbone. It is a peppy composition that works partly because in between all the smiles and sunshine is a complex Newsom arrangement that throws in an extended meditative middle section that elevates the track beyond a simple pop affair. It's one of Newsom's best pieces to date, and signals a new direction in sound for her. Unfortunately any exploration in that direction is going to have to wait for another time, because following "Good Intentions Paving Company" Newsom turns toward an almost unbearably languid approach throughout the rest of the album. This isn't entirely a bad thing, but one can't help but wish that some of the light from "Good Intentions Paving Company" would shine a little bit more throughout "Have One On Me."

The problem with the rest of the album is that it is so subdued at times it is barely even there. Certainly there are exceptions like the masterful "Soft As Chalk," but songs like "Baby Birch," "In California" and "Occident" require an extremely attentive listen to appreciate. As someone who will sit and listen to a drone record for an hour, it is safe to say I possess the requisite patience, the problem is that at times Newsom's songs just aren't compelling enough to make me want to sit and listen that closely. You really have to be in the mood for this stuff, I mean really in the mood. Having said that, there are rewards aplenty for the patient listener, I am just not sure how many people are going to want to dedicate themselves to such an undertaking. A few listens to "Jackrabbits" or "Go Long" satisfy immensely, and give hope that the struggle to endure "Have One On Me" is worth it. Ultimately each listener will have to decide on their own whether or not they are in for the long haul here. I propose that ultimately "Have One On Me" is worth it, warts and all. I can't say that it is a masterpiece, because it is a laborious listen, and at times you have to force yourself into it. At the same time, none of it is actually bad, it just isn't that compelling overall. In the end, you can't help but simply like Newsom here. Once upon a time she was a love or hate proposition. For better or worse "Have One On Me" allows listeners to simply like her, and while this record may broaden her appeal for some, it does so at the detriment of her music.

Listen to "'81"


Listen to "Good Intentions Paving Company"


Listen to "Jackrabbits"


Listen to "Soft As Chalk"

Burzum - Belus (Byelobog Productions)

Burzum, a/k/a Varg Vikernes, is the most problematic figure in the musical underground. He is a murderer, an arsonist and a racist, yet his music is some of the most important in the last twenty years. He was the single most essential member of the Norwegian black metal movement, and is responsible for shaping the sound of black metal more than any other musician, save maybe Bathory. His hypnotic style of black metal launched countless imitators all in search of the transcendental power of what has come to be known as the "Burzum Buzz" - that blizzard of sound that Varg creates using tremolo-picked guitars. His influence has stretched far beyond the world of black metal, with ambient/experimental artists as well as post-rockers and even the occasional indie rocker calling upon the magick of Burzum from time to time. Despite his failure as a human being, the power of his music is undeniable.

"Belus" is the first black metal album Burzum has released in 14 years. Paroled in 2009 after a 16 year prison sentence for the murder of Mayhem guitarist Øystein Aarseth, Varg immediately took to recording "Belus." To say that anticipation for this album is high would be a bit of an understatement. Given that Burzum's "Det Som Engang Var," "Hvis Lyset Tar Oss," and "Filosofem" enjoy a place in black metal history equal to that of Zeppelin's first four albums in hard rock history, or Sabbath's first five in metal history, the release of Varg's first black metal album following "Filosofem" is something of an event. Not only does it celebrate the return of the genre's dark lord, but it answers the question as to whether or not Varg is still black metal's most important and original voice. Fortunately for all of us, the answer is an unqualified absofuckinglutely yes.

"Belus" doesn't just meet expectations, it blows right through them and takes the "Burzum Buzz" to a whole new beautiful and terrifying place. Beginning with a short experimental introduction, the album damn near picks up right were Varg left off 14 years ago, with his famous guitar motifs and shrieking vocals spilling from the speakers. If there is any real difference between between Burzum of old and Burzum of new it is that the sound is tighter than before, with more complexity. "Glemselens Elv" is a prime example of Burzum's evolved approach. The song has that buzz, but a double track vocal of sung and screamed voices, a tumbling rhythm pattern bouyed by double bass, and a prominent bass guitar all make for a more developed approach than we have heard from Varg before. "Kaimadalthas' Nedstigning" offers another nice progression in the Burzum catalog. The song begins with a brutal sonic assault of guitars and blast beats, before the piece takes a left turn and turns the guitar attack down, drops the blast beats and changes up harsh vocals for unadorned spoken words. The song alternates between the two approaches before building toward a surprisingly melodic emotional finale. It's great stuff, and progressive without skimping on the hypnotic power that is at the core of Burzum's music.

"Sverddans" is another move sideways for Burzum. Owing more to punk and thrash than black metal, the piece chooses to stomp, rather than buzz. The album's final three tracks "Keliohesten," "Morgenrøde," and "Belus' Tilbakekomst (Konklusjon)" are three of Burzum's most hypnotic and powerful songs ever. Each takes the listener on an inward emotional journey. "Morgenrøde" eventually dissolves into simple buzzing guitar motifs that are almost ambient in nature, and which are continued throughout "Belus' Tilbakekomst (Konklusjon)." Such an approach is the logical conclusion to Burzum's atmospheric sound. If what makes Burzum so special is that buzz, then why not strip the songs down to their essence? It is riveting, trance-inducing stuff that has more in common with Sunn 0))) and Pandit Pran Nath than Mayhem.

To his credit, Varg has never incorporated his revolting politics into his music, instead looking to Tolkien and paganism for inspiration. He has gone out of his way to make it clear that "Belus" is not a political album in any way, even going so far as to drop the original title "Den Hvite Guden," which was translated as "The White God," to ensure that no one interpret the album in racialist terms. Instead "Belus" is about an ancient European sun god, his death, journey through the underworld and eventual triumphant return, it is also about the triumphant, and yes, problematic, return of Varg. If he were a second-rate musician it would be easy to simply ignore Varg, but there is nothing second-rate about his music. He is one of the greatest musical talents in the independent music world, and "Belus" is quite simply his masterpiece. It not only stands up to his earlier classics, it bests them in every way. Welcome back Varg, now please try to behave.

Listen to "Belus' Doed"


Listen to "Kaimadalthas' Nedstigning"


Listen to "Morgenrøde"