CD reviews

Sian Alice Group

Troubled, Shaken Etc.
(Social Registry)
*8.4*
Goes well with: Brian Eno, Bark Psychosis, Talk Talk, Blonde Redhead

Sian Alice Ahern has the voice of an angel. Slightly removed from the smoky jazz and country inflections of contemporaries like Beth Gibbons and Jesse Sykes, Ahern’s timbre is light as a feather, but just as affecting. In itself, it’s reason enough to purchase this album.

But describing what her band does is a bit more complicated. Before “post-rock” became a catch-all for anything that doesn’t neatly fit under the “rock” banner, projects like Talk Talk and Bark Psychosis were making moody, gorgeous epics that sounded unlike anything before or since. That is, until Sian Alice Group’s 59.59 came out last year. It’s a gorgeous, adventurous album, and even if the band’s latest, Troubled, Shaken Etc., doesn’t quite live up to its majesty, it comes pretty damn close.

There’s room for everything here, from cyclical, dreamlike balladry (“Love That Moves the Sun”) to ambient instrumentals (“Airlock”), piano-led torch songs (“First Song-Angelina”), acid-house keyboards (“Vanishing”) and even white-noise freak-outs (“Salt Water”). And all of it’s performed with the utmost class and competence.

This is a serious record. Some might even call it boring. Those people are idiots. Troubled, Shaken Etc. is the sound of a mature group, one that knows what it wants, has the chops to get there and is focused enough to incorporate disparate influences into a satisfying whole. Quite an accomplishment.

Talbot Tagora

Lessons in the woods or a city
(Hardly Art)
*7.1*

Goes well with: Unwound, early Sonic Youth, the No New York comp

Embodying the DIY ethic that seems to be pervading music scenes in most major cities across the country, Talbot Tagora’s output since 2006 includes no less than eight releases, most of them put out by the band itself. This, their ninth (and first proper full-length), is a bold mix of sharp, discordant instrumentation and abstract lyricism, one that’s hard to love but harder to dismiss.

There are more than a few bands out there mixing punk influences with clanging, squiggly guitars (Abe Vigoda, Bipolar Bear, Rapid Youth), but few do it with this sort of sustained, morbid drone. “Johnny Lazor” is a detuned journey through goth territory, at several points managing to make guitars resemble the buzz of a wasp colony flying overhead, and “Mixed Signals Through Miles of Pilgrimage” isn’t exactly “pop,” although the clever use of muted harmonics gives it the lightest feel of any song here.

Unfortunately, the uniform tone tends to make the songs blur together, but there’s still a lot to recommend. As with any band this green, there’s gonna be growing pains, and Lessons is a mess of erratic post-adolescent energy that hits just as many resonating notes as irritating ones. But over the course of these 14 songs, we can hear the gears grinding, the musicianship tightening and a talented young band growing more comfortable in its own skin.

Lightning Dust

Infinite Light
(Jagjaguwar)
*3.1*
Goes well with: Black Mountain, Arcade Fire, napping

For those of you who just can’t get enough of Black Mountain (present company excluded), here comes the second disc from Black Mountain side-project Lightning Dust. Of course, the entire Black Mountain gang isn’t on board for this one, just Amber Webber—who handles most of the vocals—and Joshua Wells.

If you haven’t checked out Lightning Dust yet, just take the slowest, most boring song on a Black Mountain album, suck all the rock out of it and turn it into an entire album. In a way, this sounds like The Arcade Fire devoid of energy. All the old-timey instruments are present, there are mountains of reverb and it’s completely depressing. It’s like a soundtrack for a bad winter on a farm. It’s what Laura Ingalls would have listened to if she went through a depression phase and started smoking weed.

If a couple more of the songs maintained the pace of the pulsating second track, “I Knew,” this disc could’ve been much more tolerable. The duo seems to have plenty of good ideas; it just sounds as if they haven’t developed the necessary songwriting skills to truly harness their talents. As it stands, it’s just another disposable piece of pretentious indie-rock that’s no fun whatsoever. I’m sure Pitchfork will love it.