Author: john-ruscher

The Hill and Wood may be named after a funeral home, but one would be hard-pressed to find a dead note on the band’s self-titled debut. Melodically, lyrically and symphonically, this album is thoroughly alive. 

The Hill and Wood releases its self-titled album on Friday, November 11 at the Haven, with frontman Sam Bush supported by an outfit of horn players and backup singers.

That’s no surprise considering how long this music has been gestating, both in frontman Sam Bush’s head and on stages around town. For the past three years Bush has navigated the band through lineup changes and honed his songs in a wide range of venues, from the cozy confines of The Garage to the vast expanse of the Pavilion. On the resulting album, it’s clear that such patience and diligence has paid off handsomely.“Vacant Spaces” opens the record with stop-and-start percussion and droning synths and strings reminiscent of moments on Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Sharing a simple melody that belies the song’s lyrical intricacies, Bush and Juliana Daugherty sing, “The sound of all the former years / Is just as loud and just as clear / As any voice is / Subconscious noises.” The lines that follow address life and love in a way that feels both intensely personal and universal.

“The Call” and “ICSWYW” pick up the pace, trading the somber mood for crunchier guitars and sinuous melodies that climb to triumphant, resounding finishes. Next comes the bare-bones folk of “The Disciple” and the particularly outstanding “Little Omaha.” Offering a novel turn on the “grass is always greener” proverb, Bush sings, “I dream of waking up in little Omaha / I only love the places that I never saw / I only love what’s strange.” With his soaring vocals bolstered by a horn section, the song approaches the orchestral flourishes of Beirut, swapping out Eastern European exoticism with a yearning for the American Heartland. 

The band channels early Radiohead on “Futile Workhorse,” suggesting that Bush has the vocal range and nuance to rival Thom York. The intertwined chamber pop of “Brighter Man” would sound at home on Sufjan Stevens’ Michigan, and “Let Us Risk The Ship, Ourselves And All” could have come from the Canadian indie rock camp, falling somewhere between the stylings of Destroyer, Neko Case and Arcade Fire. Such influences might have seemedtoo direct if not for Bush’s powerful songwriting, which lets each song stand firmly on its own.

Things really lets loose on “Something Come From Nothing,” a growling garage-rock jam that culminates in a roaring, squealing guitar freak-out. Countering that frenzy is “All’s Well That Ends,” the album’s leisurely closer, which finds comfort in difficult endings by looking to the future. “The sun will rise / To your surprise / All by itself / Without your help,” sing Bush and Daugherty in the album’s final moments.

As the literal connotations of its name suggest, The Hill and Wood’s music has plenty of natural charm. But it’s the band’s careful cultivation of its terrain that has culminated in such a superbly lush album.

 Stellar Hoax, the first full-length album from Borrowed Beams of Light, is loosely based on the Voynich Manuscript, a mysterious 15th century text that has yet to be deciphered. Don’t worry, though—this record isn’t esoteric or contrived. It’s a glistening and catchy collection of tunes that have arrived just in time to serve as a refreshing and nimble soundtrack for the muggy summer heat.

Eli Cook picked up a guitar at 14, formed his first electric trio at 16 and recorded his first record, Moonshine Mojo, at 18. At 20 he opened for blues legends B.B. King and Johnny Winter. With that trajectory he should be a worldwide blues champion by now, jetting into town to grace us with a rare and much-hyped appearance at JPJ. But the music business doesn’t catapult stars like it used to, and embracing the blues doesn’t pay off as much as it did in 1969. That’s when Winter, at Cook’s current age of 25, wooed an unprecedented $600,000 advance out of CBS Records with his version of King’s “It’s My Own Fault.”

This reality doesn’t seem to worry Cook, and in fact it’s probably been the best environment for his music. The blues is, after all, music of searching and wanting. Cook has explored the genre quite a bit, opting for classic acoustic blues on Miss Blues’ Child, metal blues on ElectricHolyFireWater, and a combination of blues, R&B and pop on Static in the Blood. It’s as if he has worked his way through a 12-bar progression of different styles, chugging along on one before moving to the next.

With his new record Ace, Jack & King, though, Cook puts all of the cards on the table. Split almost evenly between originals and covers, the album follows him from his quietest to loudest, from the cleanest acoustic notes to the thickest distortion, and from the most upbeat songs to the most downtrodden. He takes on Skip James’ “Catfish Blues” and “Crow Jane,” giving the former an updated swagger and the latter a fuzzy electric churn. He also interprets Charles Brown’s West Coast blues standard “Driftin’ Blues,” offering a slow burning, grungy take on the much-covered tune. He delves into Western Swing with “Cocaine Blues,” which features the album’s simplest orchestration—just vocals and guitar—as well as production that makes it sound like it was lifted from an old 78 rpm record.

Cook’s most unexpected turn, though, is Nick Drake’s “Black Eyed Dog,” a beautiful but devastating song about depression, and one of the last that English singer recorded before succumbing to it. Wisely bypassing the impossible task of replicating Drake’s brittle and moving delivery, Cook injects his version with more vigorous notes, giving it its own subtlety and strength.

Backing away from such a bleak moment, Cook follows “Black Eyed Dog” with one of his straightest and steadiest originals, the distortion-heavy “Death Rattle (slight return)”, singing, “Found salvation, but we just don’t mix.” But he isn’t always so dark. “Better Man” is a foot-stomper about finding the strength to do the right thing, and “Please, Please” is a warm love ballad. His other originals run the gamut from Zeppelin riffs to country twang and even acoustic pop hooks, proving that, whatever way you shake it, Cook has not only phenomenal six-string skills, but also some versatile songwriting chops. Ace, Jack & King is a good hand, and it’s exciting to see Cook go all in.

UVA’s alumni magazine arrived in the mail the other day. On the front, in text that wraps around Dave Matthews’ balding head like a halo, is the title of the cover article: “Rockin’ The Grounds.” Inside, after profiles of Wahoo rockers ranging from Skip Castro and SGGL to Pavement and Parachute, a sidebar article asks “What’s next?” In an accompanying photo, Astronomers bassist Alexandra Angelich (a graduating Hoo) is raising her instrument over her head, as if to say, “I’ve got the answer right here.”

Angelich and her bandmates—Nate Bolling, David Brear and Graham Partridge—are now sharing that answer with the masses in the form of Size Matters, their first full-length album and the follow-up to 2009’s Think Fast! EP. While that first release made good on its title by packing an immediate sonic punch, Size Matters finds the band opting to gaze at the stars rather than aim for them. With that more pensive and laid-back approach, the curves and dynamics of the band’s music have space to bend and sway.

That breathing room results in some amazing, quiet moments, starting with a beautiful breakdown in the middle of opening track “The Great Attractor,” which slows to an ambient lull before the guitars rev back up. Perhaps the best such moment is on “Saccharin,” when the band completely drops its instrumentation for an interlude of a cappella vocals and handclaps.

“Sharpshooter” is probably the album’s most single-worthy track, inviting easy comparisons to bands like The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand and Muse. But just when it seems like they might start gunning for the modern rock charts, Astronomers follow with “Tatterdemalion,” a track as odd and off-kilter as its title, with guitars ringing out like sirens and crunching drums driving it to an eerie close. The two-part suite of “The Gardener” is no less daring, moving from raw piano and vocals to a tense feedback-fueled climax before throwing down a zipping 45-second coda that’s over before you can figure out whether it fits or not.

On “A Toast to Finding Out,” the penultimate track, Bolling takes up a Thom Yorke-esque falsetto to belt out a moving romantic lament. Then the band flips things again, finishing with “Spectral Theorem,” a psychedelic spoken word jam that references the neocortex, the part of the brain responsible for sensory perception, conscious thought, spatial reasoning and motor commands.

On Size Matters, rather than running with “bigger is better,” Astronomers show that variation is key. Their neocortices are hard at work in these songs, giving the album space, consciousness and movement. If they had materialized in the ’70s, maybe Astronomers would have rocked a massive drunken crowd at Easters. If they had sprung from the late ’80s they might have gotten weird in a 14th Street basement with Stephen Malkmus and David Berman. Today, though, Size Matters places Astronomers in a constellation of local bands making interesting and nuanced rock music, somewhere near the punk fist-bobbing of the Invisible Hand, the rocketing explorations of Corsair and the glam-y glow of the Borrowed Beams of Light.

Home, the first full-length album from Charlottesville’s Manorlady, feels as much like a culmination as it does a debut. It’s the fleshed-out and polished successor to the band’s initial EP, Home Away, released at the beginning of 2010 after just a few shows around town. Taking that EP’s five songs and adding six additional tracks, Home brings Manorlady’s vision into focus.

That vision draws inspiration from the desert of Eastern California, where the band’s members, husband and wife Aaron and Melissa Bailey and her brother Donald Wooley, grew up. To the northeast of their hometown of Ridgecrest lies Death Valley’s Badwater Basin, the lowest point in the United States. Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the lower 48, looms to the northwest.

Such extremes are a far cry from the rolling countryside of the Blue Ridge and Piedmont, and Manorlady’s music seems to search for those absent highs and lows. If the Home Away EP was a sketch of that terrain, Home is an oil painting, over a year in the making, that fills in the rich textures and colors.

The album’s songs bleed into each other, providing a seamless listen from beginning to end, and the band’s influences blend just as naturally. “International Boys Club” and “Red Juice” pair New Order drum machine rhythms with the guitar and vocal atmospherics of the Cocteau Twins. “Trees” and “Delta Waves” resemble the brooding but melodic chimes of groups like Low and Galaxie 500. “Waltz for Couples,” an interlude that resembles a wind-up musical box, sits at the middle of the album, like the calm eye at the center of its swirling storm.

As Home progresses, Manorlady sheds its direct ’80s and ’90s vibe and moves further into its own dynamic explorations. On “Jimmy,” Aaron and Melissa alternate vocal lines about love over Wooley’s warm, shifting synth chords. “Vacation Plans High Desert” begins with the picking of an acoustic guitar before shifting up to a propulsive electronic beat and finally a crescendo that climaxes in a post-rock squall. The eerie “Lost Dogs” follows the same trajectory, gradually building up steam before sizzling and evaporating into “Sungazing,” the album’s final song and the most evocative of Manorlady’s desert roots. “You’re just a girl / who’s just begun / to gaze into the sun,” sings Aaron. “You tried to fly away / You tried to fly / You tried to go, go, go, home, home, home.”

With Home Manorlady recaptures the horizon of youth, but the band also maps its own unique peaks and valleys. As the album closes, going away and coming home seem to merge, an acknowledgment that leaving home is the start of creating a new one. For Manorlady that new nest is in Charlottesville, and the band has done a good job of building it so far. As the saying goes, home is where the heart is, and there’s definitely a lot of heart in Home. 

Old Calf knows wordplay. The band’s name alone begs to be read at least three different ways: as a combination of founding members Ned Oldham and Matty Metcalfe’s last names, a paradoxical animal, or a metaphor for the group’s predilection for merging old with new in their music. It’s natural, then, that the band’s debut album, Borrow A Horse, which includes Michael Clem on bass and Brian Caputo on percussion, is full of similar cunning and richness.

Each song on Borrow A Horse plucks a folk rhyme from centuries past, presenting it not as an excavated artifact, but as a nugget smoothed and refined by the sands of time. These lyrical gems cast a variety of hues, but all are ripe with poetic power. Opener “I Saw A Peacock with a Fiery Tale” elicits a string of fantastic, interconnected images through its clever line breaks. “When I Was Taken” imparts a simple riddle with a string of hints: “It’s I that make peace between king and king, / and many a true lover glad.” (What object does all that? A quill pen.)

Such lyrical tropes unravel to relate an almost Joycean narrative of human growth. Youthful fancy gives way to a spirit of rebellion with “Follow My Bangalorey Man” and “Do Not Play with Gypsies.” Then comes a sense of independence, both giddy (“Stool-Ball”) and pensive (“A Gift, A Ghost/Monday Alone”), and finally maturity, with the ghostly limerick “There Are Men in the Village of Erith” and the nuptial tones of “Henry Was A Worthy King.” Throughout the album the words evoke a sense of mystery and wonder, leading up to the final song’s telling question: “What did I dream? / I do not know. / The fragments fly like chaff.” But such wonder is nonetheless effective. “Yet strange my mind / Was tickled so, / I could not help but laugh,” the song continues.

Old Calf’s musical choices are just as thoughtful and fitting. Borrow A Horse draws on folk traditions from both sides of the Atlantic, echoing everything from Appalachian bluegrass and the Grateful Dead to Irish ballads and English folk rock of Fairport Convention. “Do Not Play with Gypsies” summons excitement and danger with a subtle siren-like synthesizer and a gradually rising chorus of backing vocal harmonies. When words are the sparsest, as on “Far From Home” and “What Did I Dream,” effortless psychedelic jams expand to fill the gaps. Melodies are potent, breathing fresh life and emotion into even the most archaic rhymes, especially on “Stool-Ball,” which refers to a 16th century game played by English milkmaids.

“We’ll borrow a horse, / and steal a gig / and ’round the world / we’ll do a jig,” Oldham sings on “Follow My Bangalorey Man,” and those titular lines get at the heart of the album. Call it borrowing, call it stealing, call it following their Bangalorey Man—Old Calf has joined past and present to deliver a fanciful, original and well-crafted debut that’s part journey, part dance. 

When I first encountered the musical energy that would become 6 Day Bender’s 2008 self-titled debut, the boys were perched atop a booth at the Virginian on a lazy fall night, strumming their acoustic guitars and crooning for anyone within earshot. Barely a few steps off of Mr. Jefferson’s turf, from where frontmen Clayton Avent and Luke Nutting would soon graduate, they were hooting, hollering and generally kicking up a storm. The unplugged and frenetic sound of that record, anchored by Nutting’s bluegrass banjo, was like an exceptional dorm room jam finally liberated from those cinderblock walls and that annoying hall mate who keeps asking you to be quiet.

6 Day Bender channels the past while looking forward in this blown-out follow up to its 2008 debut.

My first taste of the band’s follow-up, E’ville Fuzz, which was released last week, came when Nutting pumped it through the speakers of a pickup truck idling outside The Box on a winter night. That rough mix revealed a far different sound, ripe with distorted electric guitars and thick, chugging rhythms. Physically, the band had left the proximity of not only the university but also Charlottesville, finding a rural refuge in an Earlysville farmhouse (hence the album’s title). Musically, their earlier eagerness had given way to a more mature and assured stance.

E’ville Fuzz sounds…well, fuzzy. But if you dig a little deeper, the two albums have a lot in common. There are solid songs, strong chops and professions of love and frustration bent into shape by gritty vocals and twangy strings. Just as they did the first time around, the band offers up both full-throttle tunes, like “Deliverance” and “Factory Man,” as well as lingering, intimate moments, such as “Clover” and “Huxley.” 

Besides the fact that they are now running electricity through their instruments, one of 6 Day Bender’s biggest steps on E’ville Fuzz is a tendency toward a more expansive middle ground. They explore this territory with tracks like “Good Girl Blues,” an excellent tune that floats along on stretched-out slide guitar licks, the smoky, churning “Black,” and “Money, Buddy,” which begins with a simple Bo Diddley beat before the increasingly unhinged lead guitar and frequent F-bombs build to one of the album’s most visceral peaks.

The band concluded its 2008 debut with “Going Back Again,” a weary tune about giving up, packing your things and retreating to a place you’ve already known. This time they finish with “Out There,” a crescendoing song about looking towards the horizon. “I can still see it, all those thousand years away,” sings Nutting. “It’s out there, love. It’s out there.” Once a boisterous and promising group harboring worries about slipping or failing, 6 Day Bender is now a band unafraid of gazing toward the future. It’s a spirit that’s brought them to E’ville Fuzz, and it’s got the potential to take them even further. What’s next? Who knows? But it’s out there.

Combine Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy, and Robert Heinlein and you get Corsair, one of the most rocking bands in town. The Sabbath part makes perfect sense, as the band originally spawned from the annual local tribute act, Mass Sabbath. A nod to Thin Lizzy isn’t hard either, since guitarists Marie Landragin and Paul Sebring play dueling leads comparable to those rockers. The Heinlein tie-in reaches a little further, but refers to the band’s lyrical direction: a fascination with science fiction spacescapes.