Album Reviews: Web in Front’s Favorite Local Albums of 2008

By Travis Woods

As an FYI, know that we’re using the word ‘local’ rather loosely here, hijacking it as a broad umbrella term to mean, essentially, ‘from California.’ That said, there was a wealth of solid material released from local bands in 2008, a vast majority of which will not only occupy our internal soundtrack for a long, long time, but has raised the stakes and set the high-water mark for just how truly excellent the music coming from L.A./ the west coast can be–this music, and these bands, are the very reason this website (and several others like it) exist in the first place. Now, if you haven’t already, go check out these bands.

The Broken West – Now or Heaven
Still deeply rooted in west coast pop, but without the sun-goldened highlights of I’ll Go On’s freewheeling summer rock streaking through their hair, the Broken West has constructed a tightly-woven series of songs loosely based on the concept of ‘longing to return home,’ with an added focus on unity and atmosphere. So, yes, the Broken West has grown up a bit—not entirely a bad thing, as the muted, chiming beauty of the breathy and road-wearied album closer (and no, not Pavement cover) “Embassy Row” will attest—and yes, they left some of their shambolic and carefree charm on the stage when they stepped off and into the studio. But still (and of course), they know how to craft a catchy pop tune destined to soundtrack a late night road trip, whether it’s the nervy strum and insistent, building rhythms of “Gwen, Now and Then,” the grandiose vocal haze and ominous atmospherics of “Ambuscade,” or the crunching, foot-stomped pop of “Auctioneer” and “House of Lies.” So, no, the Broken West hasn’t quite made its way home yet—but at least they’ve made sure the road leading there will be an interesting one.

The Soft Hands – Hours Pass By
Hours Pass By condenses 30 years of postpunk into 40 minutes of glass-shatter guitars, rubbery rhythms and jittery, teeth-grinding vocals—and, no, while that might not be a delivery of anything new to the postpunk table, what the Soft Hands do bring is a viciously frantic and feverish energy to a genre that many of their peers do not. Without (thankfully) simply meeting the bare minimum postpunk revival standards by simply sighing in an Ian Curtis afterworld, Hours Pass By is furiously determined to nail the sound from which it springs–and it does so, over and over again, with a breathless abandon.

Death to Anders – Fictitious Business
Fictitious Business plays like a howling, nerve-split ‘best-of’ of modern indie rock, skipping from the jittery guitar dissonance of “Ghost Rock,” to the anthemic reach of “Swig Shift”’s melodic, melancholic grind, to the tumultuous roil of the title track, a song whose family tree forms arcing zigzags branching between acts as disparate as Sonic Youth to Pavement to Grandaddy, with the music following singer/guitarist Rob Danson’s trail of laryngeal shapeshifting—the song, much like the album, swings from twinkling, harmony-bathed balladry to the concussed crush of feedback epilepsy, acting as an encyclopedic rush of L.A. indie.

Le Switch – And Now… Le Switch
A warm sepia flood of brass-blast melodies arcing above the barroom brawl of Aaron Kyle’s tar-slapped vocal ruptures and the band’s ragged rock ‘n soul take on southern-stained Americana, And Now.. Le Switch’s greatest strength/secret is drummer Joe Napolitano’s thick, detailed production, which immerses the record in the wide, full-bodied sound of a deeply grooved LP. It’s the album’s knowing production that keeps it from sounding exclusively like a postmodern, alt-country rehash, or just some dust-fogged, papersleeved LP in a sunfaded bargain bin—And Now…Le Switch sounds distinctly out-of-time, as at home on a southern soul label in the ‘70s as it would be a digital-only release in the aughties. The fact that it sounds damn good in your CD player doesn’t hurt, either.

Hearts of Palm UK – For Life
A bizarrely successful marriage of gentle, singer-songwriter acoustica to the skittering fluorescence of ‘80s electro-pop, Hearts of Palm UK’s For Life is something of a rarity—an album-length remix LP of an album that was never released. Main Heart Erica Elektra had written an album of pretty, lo-fi indie folk documenting the dissolution of a relationship via her honeyed, single-track vocals, before deciding to process the whole affair through her Korg workstation–rendering such quietly, sadly gorgeous tracks like “I Flow” and “Portugal” into chiming, dance-throbbed experimentalism and swooning, burbling beatpop, respectively. The result is a thoroughly beepglitched record of stutterthumped electronica that actually has heart, no matter how broken it may be.

The Submarines – Honeysuckle Weeks
A buzzing, busy indie-pop thicket of swooning, dub-stained electronica and giddy pop choruses, Weeks is the rare musical portrait of a romantic reunion and marriage that isn’t bogged down by the lethargy that can trip-wire so many bands in their attempt to offer aural snapshots of the good life (hey, Wilco).

Obi Best - Capades
Pop that’s more Prefab Sprout than prefab and riddled with tunes that are difficult, oddball and packed with wacky wordplay—never have word-heavy semi-showtunes sounded so good.

The Mae Shi – HLLLYH
A brutal, neck-snapped assault of freak-punk anarchy supported by an ambitious lyrical concept (the search for God) and tinged with a knowing smirk and deliriously strange 8-bit pop, HLLLYH may not be the best record of the year, but it certainly holds the title as The Strangest–which, in a time of aural blandness, is no small feat at all.

The Little Ones – Morning Tide
Dropped from Astralwerks earlier this year after releasing the Sing Song EP’s wildy rollercoasted pop hooks and starburst melodies in 2006, the Little Ones have returned with a debut full-length the takes that earlier EP’s condensed burst of blinding exuberance and allows that sound to sprawl and unfurl. And that odd, repetitive thudding sound you hear? It’s the folks at Astralwerks repeatedly slapping their foreheads in time to the lovely summer pop of “All Your Modern Boxes.”

Low vs Diamond – Low vs Diamond
A frenetic rock record of arena anthems that owes as much to Bowie, Air and Brian Ferry as it does U2 and the Killers, this self-titled debut’s biggest surprise (and reward) is that not only does it not fail, but that it proves mainstream rock ‘n roll, in the right hands, is just as capable of unabashed greatness as it was when plaid and Pearl Jam were more than just punchlines.

Cold War Kids – Loyalty to Loyalty
As far as hook-barbed songs go, Loyalty to Loyalty’s leadoff single “Something is Not Right with Me” cuts like razor wire with its sheer, bludgeoning infectiousness. As far as second albums go, Loyalty to Loyalty isn’t nearly as immediate as its unrepresentative single; it’s not exactly a post-Robbers & Cowards misstep, either. Instead, Cold War Kids have deepened their sound rather than expanding it—lead single notwithstanding, Loyalty finds a band more interested in exploring the atmosphere and mood of their music rather than ridiculously trying to hone it to the hypermelodic nosebleed heights that any attempt to top “Hang Me Up to Dry” would require. It might not have been the most sales-savvy approach, but it very well may be the right one. The Kids are growing up, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue
As thematically and sonically scattershot as her previous record (2006’s Rabbit Fur Coat) was deftly unified, Jenny Lewis’ Acid Tongue is a loose and lovely ramshackle update of the indulgent and genre-skipping singer-songwriter solo discs of the ‘70s—just as the folk-flit Rabbit Fur Coat’s Appalachian twang and blue-eyed, harmonized soul was a heart-cracking revision of ‘60s-styled country pop, Tongue pushes Lewis’ sound into the following decade’s take on southern-stained music: alternately shaggy and slick, harder-edged and tinted with coke spoon reflections on failed romance, drugs, and dangerous women.

Although the LP lacks a unifying concept or theme (usually a Lewis trademark), what does bind the album is her consistently powerful and melodic songwriting, and the sheer strength of her howling, playful vocal, which has never sounded better on record.

Les Blanks – Shoot the Horse
A clattering, caterwauling howl of L.A. blues as refracted through a battered prism of the Stooges’ sludge-punk bloodbaths and indie-rock’s wounded, smirking ache, Les Blanks’ Shoot the Horse continues the band’s (formally Muso) exploration into the lunar pockmarks of protopunk’s damaged landscape, but with a sense of freedom and exploration atypical to the genre—they sound just as comfortable on the ludicrously catchy, L.A.-based beerhall piano jaunt, “La Reina,” as they do on the snarled gnash and rend of “That Heart Attack”’s exposed-nerve wail. Les Blanks’ ability to seamlessly blend this array of disparate sounds is their own reward; Shoot the Horses is ours.

No Age - Nouns
Heat-shattered fragments of twisting, amp-hummed noise slash and rend throughout this series of weirdo rippers, but it’s the strangely affecting sheets of icy ambience in between the Smell-ster howls that will stay with you long after the last sputterfuzz gash of closer “Brain Burner” fades from your thoroughly drummed ears.

Delta Spirit - Ode to Sunshine
As the indie-twanged and rushing waves of Ode to Sunshine’s late-bloomer “Children” fills your ears with the jingle-jangle majesty of its low-key rustle, it would be easy to christen the Delta Spirit’s sonically referential sound as the Violent Femmes gone sepia, as many—you know how people talk—already have; rather, the Spirit’s warbly, raw-throat desperation and the pressure-drop swoon of their seasick dynamics sound more like Alec Ounsworth clapping his hands and saying yeah while remaking Music from Big Pink. In the end, Sunshine is nothing less than an ode to musical joy.

Everest – Ghost Notes
An alternately rollicking and haunted collection of Californicated Americana, Ghost Notes is just as comfortable spinning a sepia-burnished haze of ‘70s country-rock as it is burning through wild and windmilled rock ‘n roll.

The Movies – Based on a True Story
Seamlessly blending their smirking brand of joy divided postpunk and sleaze-slicked Caucasoid funk with weary and mercurial synth-hazed ballads, The Movies outdid themselves with Based on a True Story, crafting not just a record that exemplifies the band at its wild-eyed and glistening best (indeed, if you were to simply add “Secretariat,” “Autograph” and “Creation Lake” to the track listing, you’d essentially have the Movies’ definitive best-of), but stands as some of the finest songwriting of 2008: seriously have you heard a better single than “Missed Opportunities”? Exactly.

The Airborne Toxic Event - The Airborne Toxic Event
The Airborne Toxic Event’s gift is two-fold: they take the textured, day-to-day moments of modern life and elevate them to a level of art—so bright is the light they shine on these moments that the shadows they cast take on grand, tragic dimensions. Further, they bind that art into a leg-blurring swirl of dancing, defiant rock ‘n roll in the face of loss and death. Full of grandeur and humor, darkness and celebration, the Airborne Toxic Event sprints where so many others have stumbled—they’ve crafted a desperately ambitious, daring first album that deftly melds gigantic, kinetic poetics to minute, achingly private reveries—and like an old Springsteen track, but with more synth and viola, these tramps were born to run.

Darker My Love – 2
Cohesive where their first album was amorphous, 2 roots itself firmly in the shoegaze revival genre without drowning in the tarpit of that scene’s trappings—despite a band name that Rorschachs imagery of eyeliner’d dandies with Scissorhands hair setting their diary entries to morosely anemic gothschlock pop, this is an album that textures its gritty, nicotine-sweat rockers with coruscating waves of lustrous, even gorgeous, popshimmer guitar grooves and melodies.

It’s a surprisingly balanced LP, one in which the brutal crush of “Northern Soul”’s slash-riffed hooks and leg-slapped backbeat share space with the high-end vocal swoons and cough-syrupy Beach Boys drones of “Even in Your Lightest Day” or “All the Hurry and Wait.” And, unlike some other Nu Gazers, they fall closer in line with a band like the Silversun Pickups, in which their influences prism into waves of new sounds rather than wind tunneled echoes of whatever vinyl spirals were spinning in their apartments before the drive to the studio. More so than their debut, Darker My Love’s 2 succeeds in filtering their feedback-riddled family tree into a work that not only stands on its own, but which casts a large and branch-gnarled shadow from which their fellow bands will have to sound twice as good in order to escape.

The Henry Clay People – For Cheap or For Free
Opening with the driving sting of “Something in the Water,” before moving to the swaggering country-rock of “Living in Debt” and the sprawling, biting rock-country of “This Ain’t a Scene,” the record (and the band) doesn’t so much leapfrog genres as it collapses them into one another while singer/guitarist Joey Siara spews, spits and chuckles lyrics about being any number of marginalized groups (a debt-ridden college grad, an American band without skintight jeans that listened to Born to Run before Neon Bible) in the strange new sequel to the American Century.

And while the record occasionally admits to a generational fatigue—the lovely, simply lovely, strum and hum of bassist Noah Green’s “Bulls Through,” the coulda-been-on-Side-Two-of-Exile on Main Street offhand shuffle of “I Was Half Asleep”—the Henry Clay People never succumb to it; with songs like the buzzsaw churn of “Fine Print” and “Andy Sings!”’s punk-gnarled twists along with the monolithically anthemic singalongs of the windmilling “Working Part Time” and the wistful surge of “You Can Be Timeless,” the band offers one fiery and ramshackle rebuttal after another to any notion of surrender, and they do so seemingly without breaking a sweat. Their music will, however, break your speakers at the proper volume, leaving you even more in probable debt, and yet twice as thankful.

December 23, 2008 | Filed Under Album Reviews, Exclusive Features, Features of 2009, Music News, Site News 

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