Memory Will Rust And Erode Into Lists

John K. Samson - Provincial
As anyone with even a cursory knowledge of The Weakerthans knows, a sort of late-Autumn melancholy is coded directly into John K. Samson's voice. Of course, the bittersweet, nostalgia-dripping lyrics and quiet melodies that he creates only cement that feeling. Samson's first solo record, Provincial, is no departure from this tone, but adds another chapter to the navel-gazing epic of Canadian life and times that his records add up to be.

Even though The Weakerthans are not exactly purveyors of burly rock sounds, the work on Provincial is still a little more withdrawn than Samson's work in his main band. The sounds get dirty when they need to, but even those moments are few. The guitars are a little quieter than a Weakerthans release, the drums a bit less insistent. The melodies, however, are still dominant, and they're easily as good as Samson's work on Reconstruction Site or Reunion Tour. Strings and piano join in with the standard guitars and drums to mellow out the proceedings. The songs are frequently painted in shades of blue and gray, but imbued with enough slivers of beauty and magic that you can tell that the sadness was worth it.

While the music is obviously important, what really stands out about Samson's body of work is his stellar lyricism. He spins tales in his songs that contain emotions and sentiments far larger in scope than you might think a few dozen lines ever could, not unlike a Tom Waits with a soft, clean voice. Rather than the third-person stories of winners and losers, Samson seems to be writing rather more personally here. The songs are filled with hockey and heartbreak and days spent without seeing the sun. The lyrics are beautiful and sad and funny, in a dead-of-winter sort of way.

None of the songs on Provincial would sound out of place on a Weakerthans release, which might make some question why they weren't simply released on one, but the fact that all of these songs exist instead on a solo record makes sense once you listen to them as a unified piece. They spell out a small life in a small city, and all the larger memories and feelings that can entail. Samson is a singular voice and an excellent writer, and Provincial is well worth a listen for anyone who remembers fifteen years ago like it was yesterday.

-Review by TZARATHUSTRA

Blessed and Cursed and Won

The Smashing Pumpkins - Oceania
It's gratifying to be able to say the following sentence, as I was uncertain that I'd ever get the opportunity again: The new Smashing Pumpkins record is really good. Billy Corgan has said of the album, "...it is the first time where you actually hear me escape the old band. I'm not reacting against it or for it or in the shadow of it." Oddly, it appears that this escape from the fetters of the old incarnation of the Pumpkins has freed him up to deliver a sound that is more classic than anything he's done since the late Nineties.

Make no mistake, this is not a Mellon Collie clone. It's immediately obvious that Oceania is a different animal than Corgan's earlier efforts, but the songs here don't have the same forced quality that can be heard on the rest of the Pumpkins' 21st century output. Zeitgeist was a difficult record. It was difficult to penetrate as a listener, and I'm sure it was difficult to produce for Corgan and company. It may have been something of a disappointment to listeners, but looked at objectively, it was an understandable disappointment. It was a comeback album from a new band with an old name in a different century. Hardly surprising then, that few felt at home with the end result. On the other hand, Oceania feels natural, like Billy is letting himself be Billy, and the album became just what it was meant to be.

The first three tracks on Oceania offer some long-missed Corgan melodies with warm, fuzzed-out guitars. Fans made skittish by past disappointments should know that by the end of the first song, "Quasar," you can feel your guard coming down, and by the end of the third song, "The Celestials," you're just happy that things are back to normal in Pumpkinland. The next few songs are notable in that they're led by New Order/Depeche Mode-style electronics, which are backed with steady bass work, sweeping strings, and acoustic guitars to great effect. The last half of the album returns to more rock-oriented territory, with "Inkless" as a standout with a huge Siamese Dream-era guitar tone and passionate vocals. While the guitars are certainly still at the forefront of most of the songs, Corgan has done away with unnecessary heroics and overlong compositions, reaffirming his ability to make a tight, listenable album despite all the fuzzy dreaminess contained within its thirteen tracks.

There are legions of thirty- and forty-somethings across the world who will be overjoyed at Oceania, though its appeal should extend far beyond the legacy demographic. It may not quite reach the towering heights of Siamese Dream or Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, but it absolutely deserves to be a part of the same discography. It's a beautiful album that restores the Smashing Pumpkins name to its former glory.

-Review by TZARATHUSTRA

Weight of Days

A Broken Consort - Box of Birch & Crow Autumn
A Broken Consort is the musical brainchild of artist Richard Skelton, who works under many different names, each covering a facet of his musical explorations. I use the word 'explorations' here on purpose, because Skelton is more a craftsman of soundscapes and collages than anything else. As such, A Broken Consort satisfies a very specific part of his musical personality, a sepia-toned world of fading memories and half-remembered dreams, which, depending on how a listener feels about that sort of thing, can be interpreted alternately as awe-inspiring, comforting, or terrifying.

A 'broken consort' is actually a bit of Baroque musical terminology referring to an ensemble made up of instruments from different families, such as strings and woodwinds. This ties in directly with what Skelton creates under this name, as the sounds captured on the two records he has so far released are comprised largely of droning, looped string instruments mingled with clattering, distant percussion, meandering piano sounds, and what appears to be barely audible field recordings. The strings wail and sigh and sing, you can hear knocking against the wood of the instruments and the squeak of strings. There is no beat, no pulse, no rhythm of any kind. The sounds come unbidden and retreat when they've had their say. Despite that, the records are not ambient. The sound is very present and intimately recorded, and any attention paid to the records is handsomely rewarded with the atmosphere created by them.

Box of Birch was the first official release by A Broken Consort, followed by Crow Autumn. Both records are similarly executed, but to oddly different effects. Box of Birch tends to sound warmer and somewhat more comforting, while Crow Autumn is colder, more spare and unsettling. The first record is haunting, while the second seems haunted. On both, the music rusts and rots, the drones collect dust; it all seems impossibly old and yet somehow timeless.

It should go without saying that A Broken Consort is not for everyone. I imagine that most people, if exposed to these records, would think they sounded like a string section tuning up before a performance...for an hour straight. But there are a select few for whom these recordings will transport them somewhere else. There is an inexplicable power and charm to the sounds on these tracks that goes beyond mere strings and assorted sounds. Skelton has created something special with A Broken Consort, and the lucky ones that can access the magic therein will have found something unforgettable.

-Review by TZARATHUSTRA

Can't Stop Thinking Big

Rush - Clockwork Angels
There are a lot of ways to look at a new Rush album, but in the end it boils down to the fact that you have two groups of people who might be interested: Rush Fanboys and Everyone Else, and you have to tailor the review to one of those groups. As a member of Everyone Else, I'll be directing my energies in that direction. People who aren't avid Rush supporters are apt to ignore most of Rush's catalog other than maybe the really memorable releases like 2112 and Moving Pictures, and as such, they'd be largely unaware of the course he band has taken since the late Seventies. Again, I fall into this camp. Unfair, perhaps, but those are the risks you face as a prog band who has been working consistently for over 40 years. The just-released Clockwork Angels is Rush's twentieth LP, though the first single has been floating around the internet for close to two years now. The news surrounding this album's long delayed delivery was what initially brought me to give that early single "Caravan" a listen. I knew what I was expecting from it when I clicked the link on YouTube, but what I heard was somewhat surprising in that it was not embarrassing.

Somehow Rush has sidestepped the pitfalls of being a Seventies prog band in the world of modern rock music. The sound isn't dated. The guitars are thick and heavy, the mix is clear but edgy, and the composition isn't overly wanky or long-winded, but it does show obvious craft and attention to detail. Rush appears to have listened to and learned from the entirety of rock history since their heyday, and yet appear to have kept their individual soul as a band intact as well. They're still Rush, they're just 2012 Rush, which is as much as a person can ask of a band in their position, really.

Clockwork Angels is a good old-fashioned concept album, involving a plot that pits individuality against a totalitarian world with elements of science fiction and steampunk. I'll be honest, I've not fully absorbed the lyrical contributions and put it together as a cohesive story yet, but I'm sure the upcoming novelization of the album (written by sci-fi author Kevin J. Anderson) would help with that. I can say, though, that the music is interesting, with some inspired work from guitarist Alex Lifeson, whose and guitar tones and techniques help keep things interesting as the band travels far outside the verse-chorus-verse structure. Geddy Lee's vocals are expressive, but thankfully more understated than you might expect from a prog band, and his bass is further up in the mix than usual, which adds a Tool-esque dimension to the sound in some places. Peart's drums are reliably fascinating; the method of playing while being conducted orchestra-style by the band's producer Nick Raskulinecz has paid off. The musical ability displayed on the record is unassailable, and the only complaint I have is that after a while, things begin to sound a bit formless, but you could maybe chalk that up to the fact that prog is not, by and large, my go-to genre.

Overall, Clockwork Angels is a solid album worth a listen even for those without a serious Rush obsession, but for those with a high tolerance for proggy weirdness, this should be a feast.

-Review by TZARATHUSTRA

A Curse or a Blessing?

Wodensthrone - Curse
It takes a special kind of attitude to make black metal interesting these days. The strictures of the genre are fairly narrow, as such things go, and we've heard the angry guys with bullet belts do their thing for twenty years now. The unrelenting blastbeats and raspy screams are great, but bands now definitely have to walk a tightrope between "I heard this album ten years ago" and "this isn't even black metal." That's why, despite what the Kvltists would have you believe, I think the opening of the genre to more progressive, folk, and post-rock elements was a good thing. British black metal band Wodensthrone seem to agree as well, because their new LP Curse shows that they've successfully welded elements beyond spiked shinguards and facepaint to their icy Saxon darkness.

Between the release of their last album, Loss, and now, Wodensthrone lost their lead singer, but decided to split the duties amongst themselves. Since the remaining members clearly have the talent to pull it off, this was a great decision. Black metal vocals can easily become grating and tedious over an entire record player, but the multiple vocalists really keeps things interesting here. There are even clean vocals used to great effect in songs like the excellent "Jormungandr." Overall, the musicianship is top-notch, very precise and emotional, and most importantly, the extra musical elements are blended seamlessly with the scathing black metal. Wodensthrone clearly knows what they're doing, and they don't force listeners through awkward transitions. Just take a listen to how the bridge in "First Light" unfolds. The aggressive guitar and drum attack gives way to acoustic guitar and flutes, but instead of the shift being jarring, it becomes dramatic, a feeling that gets heightened even further as the electric guitars lay their leads over the bridge. All this is made possible by the clear, crisp production; this record is thankfully devoid of any tin-can recording techniques.

The best tendency to come from the expansion of the black metal genre is the downplaying of the play-acting Satanism and ridiculous theatrical overtures, and Wodensthrone is a great example of this. The music is serious and true, completely devoid of schlock, and willing to let aggression occasionally take a back seat to other colors in the emotional palette.

-Review by TZARATHUSTRA