Author: jamesford

After appearing on a pair of reverb-soaked and long sold-out cassettes, Angel Olsen made a proper full-length debut in 2012 with Half Way Home. Simple, confident, clear, and cohesive, it’s an instant classic. The album is an arresting record in the tradition of cult ’70s folk artists like Linda Perhacs—though Olsen’s aesthetic is far closer to the restrained, minimal intensity of Nico or Bridget St. John than the wild whimsy of Sandy Denny or Buffy Saint-Marie.

There’s a focus and intensity that would be frightening if it weren’t leavened by Olsen’s achingly gorgeous voice, which is so full of quavering detail and texture that it’s hard to stop listening to. This is one of those albums that moves in with you, that you find permanently occupying your turntable or car stereo.

Ultimately, the ’70s singer-songwriter that Half Way Home mostly brings to mind is Leonard Cohen (particularly his first four albums). Olsen has the same introspective intensity, the same talent for balancing bleak darkness and gentle vulnerability, and the same knack for breaking your heart with a line or two, whether she’s singing about being disoriented and overwhelmed by romantic love as in “Acrobat” or about the death of a parent in “Lonely Universe.”

She even manages Cohen’s brand of sly humor in “Miranda.” “Don’t stand too close to me, darling/keep your hands where I can see/don’t you know you’re wanted in 50 states/I love you dear, but it’s not up to me.” The album seems deceptively austere at first, but its few embellishments stand out starkly and are perfectly balanced against the otherwise minimal presentation of Olsen’s voice and guitar.

Her forthcoming album, Burn Your Fire for No Witness (due February 18 on Jagjaguwar), is a distinct stylistic departure. Instead of simple acoustic guitar arrangements, Olsen is backed by a full rock band. It’s always something of a risk when a musician like this “goes electric.” Too often the delicacy of the songs is covered up by the overbearingly loud music, or the quality of the writing gets dumbed down in an attempt to meet the format. Thankfully, that’s not the case here. The arrangements are still simple ones; it’s largely three-chord garage rock, as well-structured and perfectly recorded as her first record, and though Olsen’s songwriting style has shifted slightly, it brings out new strengths in her work.

“Forgiven/Forgotten,” the album’s second track, is the instant hit and an early contender for best rock song of the year. It’s exactly two minutes long, but it accomplishes a great deal in that time. It seems deceptively simple at first, beginning with an alt-rock 101 fuzzy guitar progression as Olsen’s distorted voice sings “All is forgotten/always you are forgiven.” It builds quickly but confidently, avoiding any flashy climaxes or showy moves, while gathering intensity. By the time she’s harmonizing with herself, agonizing: “Will you ever forgive me/a thousand time through/for loving you,” the song is already over and is already your new favorite.

Elsewhere on the record, the band’s slower material is fleshed out with twangy, tremolo guitar, sad piano chords, and driving rhythms that evoke a smoky southern bar at the end of a rainy weeknight. Slow-burners like “White Fire” or “Iota,” while cut from the same cloth, wouldn’t have fit comfortably on the first record, and the uptempo tracks employ a far more economical approach to songwriting.

Whereas Half Way Home applies Olsen’s considerable talents to evoking delicate intimacy, Burn Your Fire applies the same skills to driving, forceful, mid-tempo mini-anthems. The first album was one to sip tea to, this is one to cry in your whiskey over. Her ability to switch effortlessly from one style to the next gives hope that she might be an artist capable of many more masterpieces.

Olsen’s videos are also worth mentioning. Her ongoing collaboration with filmmaker Zia Anger has resulted in a half-dozen videos, all of which are memorable. Each was shot on 16mm film with the warmth of simple, handmade work, and they’re confidently composed—a perfect match for the music.

Olsen performs in a kind of deadpan, minimalist vamp through a gaudy set in “Hi-Five.” In “Tiniest Seed” she harmonizes with herself in stark black and white double and triple exposure, while in “Sweet Dreams” the film stock is cross-processed, blurry, and blossoms into the kind of lush, neon distortions that are impossible to replicate with digital media.

The video collaboration suggests an attention to detail and cautious choices that have marked Olsen’s career thus far. Though Olsen has reportedly written songs throughout her whole life, she’s only recently became serious about releasing them. She’s spoken of not wanting to feel rushed in her career, and has remained somewhat guarded about her success thus far (though she’s also popped up in unlikely collaborations with Will Oldham and Joan of Arc’s Tim Kinsella)—another rarity in the age of bands that are desperate for attention.

Olsen’s career, like her music, is careful and deliberate. When matched with her considerable talent, the results are devastatingly good.

Angel Olsen begins her U.S. tour at the Southern Café and Music Hall on February 18. Old Calf opens.

As the line-up of the excellent local rock band The Fire Tapes disintegrated last year, bassist Rob Dobson began looking for a new musical outlet for his songwriting efforts. He found a collaborator in drummer Greg Sloan, who currently holds down the kit for Ha-Rang and Dwight Howard Johnson, and the duo formed Big Air (which I initially misheard as “Big Hair,” although it’s not that kind of band), which played a handful of local gigs over the past couple of months.

I caught one of its sets a few weeks ago (opening for Speedy Ortiz at the Tea Bazaar), and though I’d been a fan of Dobson and Sloan’s individual past efforts, I was impressed by how great the new act is. Big Air was easily the highlight of the evening’s four-band bill. Whereas The Fire Tapes played country-tinged shoegaze rock, and Dobson’s previous solo efforts had been low-key, confessional singer-songwriter material in the sensitive Elliott Smith vein, Big Air defines itself in a fuzzy, high-energy barrage of endearing shout-along grunge pop.

The stripped down arrangement (just guitar, vocals, and drums) suits it perfectly, and the simple setup allows both members to master the material, leading to strong, solid performances in which they can knock out impressive numbers without needing to pause and reconfigure in between.

Dobson has also learned how to yell, and his distortion-heavy buzzsaw guitar riffs serve his angry, dismissively cool songs. The blend of simple, catchy melodies and messy, energetic rock owes a lot to grunge-era college radio stalwarts like Dinosaur Jr. and Superchunk, with a sly pop punk sensibility that hints at Guided By Voices, The Exploding Hearts, or a pre-major label Green Day. Big Air has quickly become the band to watch in Charlottesville.

Next week, Big Air will release its debut EP, a seven song cassette tape entitled Buds, issued by local WarHen Records. It was recorded last summer, engineered by Dobson, his former bandmate Mark McLewee, and label co-head Warren Parker. It’s remarkably cohesive and confident, considering that the recording sessions happened only a few weeks after the band’s formation and before its first live performances.

Dobson overdubs his own bass parts, and multi-tracks his vocals throughout, harmonizing his distinctive high-pitched yowl with a more mid-range deadpan. It fills out the band’s sound well, and the clean, efficient mix of rambunctious fuzz suits its material perfectly.

The strong A-side rips through four short, catchy-as-hell numbers (the first three, “Cemetery With a View,” “Spot to Hang,” and “Barking Dog,” are particularly excellent) at a Ramones-level pace, while the B-side slows down to close out the track list with two mid-tempo songs “Out of This World” and “The Black Gate.”

The subject matter sticks to universal themes of adolescent angst. “I woke up to the sound of a barking dog,” Dobson sings on one track. “We’re all alone in a parking lot / but I can’t speak your name.” Two separate songs mention being 17 (though both band members are closer to 30), but there’s enough cryptic sarcasm to keep the band from being mistaken for an emo group or a Warped Tour act.

At less than 10 minutes on each side, the tape is over before you know it, but the A-side is so damn good you’ll want to flip it and press play. The cassette is wrapped in a suitably simple two-color j-card designed by Thomas Dean (whose own long-running aggro-garage act, Order, also boasts Dobson among its notoriously unstable membership).

Big Air’s debut release will be available at the show at the Southern on February 7 with Eternal Summers and Borrowed Beams of Light.

Borrowed Beams of Light is the firmly established arch-pop project of Adam Brock, whose whimsical, psychedelic songs can be enjoyed on two EPs and two full-lengths, the most recent of which is last year’s On the Wings of a Bug.

The band’s live line-up varies slightly from show to show, but is invariably a local supergroup drawn from Brock’s pool of collaborators that includes Corsair’s Marie Landragin and Jordan Brunk, Weird Mob’s Dave Gibson, drummer Ray Szwabowski, and occasionally Nate Walsh, Brock and Brunk’s former bandmate from their college days in The Nice Jenkins.

Eternal Summers is a Roanoke-based trio that has spent the past five years making some of the best indie rock from anywhere. They’ve released a steady stream of material, drawing a trajectory from the Breeders-esque garage-pop to the Cure-influenced brooding, but the music has remained reliably excellent throughout. The upcoming album, The Drop Beneath, will be released next month on Kanine Records. Advance previews indicate that it might be the band’s poppiest and most professional offering yet.

When was the last time you purchased a cassette tape? Tell us about it in the comments section below.

Deerhunter’s second album, Cryptograms, made it a household name in indie rock circles. Released in early 2007 by the legendary and long-running Kranky record label, the album features an appealing mix of sprawling and dreamy guitar sounds, anchored by slow-building, bass-heavy grooves and distorted, distantly cool vocals. It sounds almost as if the Atlanta-based quintet is working its way through a checklist of beloved sounds and styles: energetic post-punk riffs, gorgeous shoegaze textures, thoughtful art-rock attitudes, and wry glam posturing. The band quickly ascended from cult favorite status to a high-profile success story, touring larger venues, joining numerous festival lineups, and finding itself on the receiving end of lots of critical praise and enthusiastic adoration.

Unlike many of its peers, success and attention didn’t seem to sit comfortably with Deerhunter. Frontman Bradford Cox—who has an unusual appearance due to suffering from Marfan Syndrome, and who describes himself as either queer or asexual, depending on which interview you read—is a wild, unpredictable presence in the band’s live shows. Cox’s performance antics have included dressing in drag, dousing himself in fake blood, and taking a sarcastic and occasionally abrasive attitude towards the audience. He’s had a strange reaction to his moderate level of fame, and over the years has given some of the most interesting (and reliably entertaining) interviews in 21st century rock music.

Deerhunter avoids being pigeonholed as a safe, commercially acceptable band, ready for car-commercials and suburban lifestyle-soundtracking. “I hate indie culture,” Cox told Pitchfork in 2011. “I am not an indie rock musician—I don’t even know what the fuck that means.”

Over the years the band members seemed desperate to reassert themselves as punks, as unpredictable and potentially dangerous outsiders. In a later interview with Pitchfork, Cox proclaimed, “I am a terrorist. As a homosexual, my job is simply to sodomize mediocrity.”

Protestations and posturing aside, Deerhunter’s music has remained reliably appealing and accessible over the years. There are no anthemic climaxes or shout-along choruses, yet Deerhunter’s sound is almost unerringly pretty, even as it shifts from gentle, hushed moments to dense, extended crescendos.

2008’s Microcastle and 2010’s Halcyon Digest continued to highlight Deerhunter’s strengths, and though its formula varies very little, the band’s aesthetic has never become over-polished or diluted in quality.

Cox and drummer/keyboardist Moses Archuleta are the only two consistent members since the band’s inception, though guitarist Lockett Pundt has long been a prominent presence in the group. Despite the shifting membership, the music has grown increasingly confident, cohesive, and consistent.

While Deerhunter cites experimental krautrock groups like Faust as formative influences, its most recent effort, 2013’s Monomania, is filled with charming grooves that are far more reminiscent of T. Rex or The Strokes.

Cox is even more prolific in his solo career—releasing three records under the name Atlas Sound, and offering dozens of free downloads of archival and unreleased material. (2009’s Logos, featuring collaborations with Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox and Stereolab’s Lætitia Sadier, is the strongest of the bunch.) The side project has also given him free rein to indulge his wilder impulses, outside of the democracy of the group. At a Minneapolis concert two years ago, a ski-masked Cox responded to an audience member’s sarcastic request for a cover of The Knack’s “My Sharona” by playing the song for a full hour. Guitarist Pundt has also released solo material, under the name Lotus Plaza.

Deerhunter performs at The Jefferson Theater on February 4, and Invisible Hand opens.

Turn here

This weekend, Left and Right returns to Charlottesville. From its lowly roots as a largely forgettable band of current and former UVA students (whose band name was presumably derived from the fact that all four members were UTS bus drivers), Left and Right spent several years improving its repertoire and honing its craft until it became one of the most reliably excellent bands in town.

The mix of jangling, high-energy rock riffs with wry, confessional lyrics, is a style that owes more than a little to early ’90s titans like Dinosaur, Jr. and Superchunk. The band relocated to Philadelphia en masse last August, but not before playing a solid series of farewell shows at the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar in which the quality and intensity seemed to improve with every performance.

Friday’s concert at the Tea Bazaar will be its first show in town since its departure, with the occasion being a three-day tour of Central Virginia, along with two other like-minded bands: Harrisonburg’s Lil Huffy (which has also played a number of impressive shows over the past few months) and the Richmond-based group Snowy Owls.

What is your favorite college band? Tell us about it in the comments below.