SHORT REVIEWS
Marco Benevento: TigerFace (Royal Potato Family)
The opening two tracks of jam/jazz keyboardist Marco Benevento’s latest record may come as a surprise to those expecting the purely instrumental, pianodriven arrangements that have populated his previous releases. Bubbling synths and danceable rhythms underpin the repeated refrains of Rubblebucket vocalist Kalmia Traver on “Limbs of a Pine,” while an undulating bass line and harpsichord back the singer on lead single “This is How it Goes.” Benevento’s playful pop sensibility remains intact, but the songs mark a striking departure from his older output. The remainder of the album finds Benevento traversing more familiar territory, pounding away at his amplified acoustic piano, accompanied by the likes of Tortoise’s John McEntire and Mike Gordon of Phish. Strong, repetitious melodies are laid atop drums and bass, often supplemented with strings or one of the composer’s circuit-bent toys. –Zach Long
The Casket Lottery: Real Fear
(No Sleep)
After a five-year run as a full-time band from 1998 to 2003, Kansas City indierock trio The Casket Lottery was able to look back on three standout full-lengths and a handful of EPs. Come 2006, the perpetually underrated band had adopted the same attitude as fellow Kansas City notable Coalesce—which shares The Casket Lottery’s Nathan Ellis and Nathan Richardson—by lying low and working on other projects, but never officially breaking up. Flash forward to 2012 and The Casket Lottery has magically reappeared with two more members—Brent Windler on second guitar and Nick Siegel on keys—and a new full-length album, Real Fear. Siegel, in particular, adds a new layer with his minor-key melodies. The songs are as well written and catchy as ever—all in the band’s morose but hopeful and slightly vengeful
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tone. Dynamics have always played a part in The Casket Lottery, with tension building to release numerous times over the course of an album and sing-along-ready lyrics built into its multiple-vocalist approach. Real Fear is just as dynamic, if not more so, and that’s as the band only begins to refine its new sound. –Dave Hofer
Clark: Fantasm Planes (Warp) Electronic dance music (EDM) is just the latest musical trend numbing the rhythmically minded. Even artier synth-based acts such as Beach House have gravitated in recent years toward beats that are steady, persistent, and put-you-to-sleep metronomic. Clark subscribes to an electronic sound that takes all the best bits of EDM and filters them through a composer’s mind—IDM (“intelligent dance music”), as it’s called. Clark’s recent EP, Fantasm Planes, is like a conjoined twin to this year’s Iradelphic LP, except somewhat slighter in frame and more likely to be found at the club (dragging Ira along, to her dismay). The six-song EP takes “Henderson Wrench,” “Com Touch,” and “Secret” from Iradelphic and explores alternative versions to each, the dials twisting until everything’s a little more blown out, a little more aggressive. The other three tracks are new but are similarly produced: Clark’s buckling melodies on ecstasy and Jack-and-Cokes. The deep bass beats are persistent but interestingly used, with enough complexity and one-off sections to make the moment in “Com Re-Touch / Pocket for Jack” where a straight beat comes in—sounding truly like a metronome—all the more surprising. –Timothy A. Schuler
Dark Dark Dark: Who Needs Who (Supply & Demand) It’s true that breakups can be a catalyst to endearing music. Much like it sounds, Dark Dark Dark’s Who Needs Who carries a heavy heart, written during the
parting of singer/pianist Nona Marie Invie and bandmate/multi-instrumentalist Marshall LaCount. And though challenging under the circumstances, each member manages to translate mixed emotions into a musical synergy that’s deeply private and revealing. Who Needs Who shows the group not only maturing as a band, but also as long-time friends rediscovering common ground with one another. Perhaps it’s the piano-driven chamber folk or the wistful lyrics that make the music seem interlocked with deeper meaning, but even at the surface, this Minneapolis-based collective confronts emotional intensity with immediate poise and clarity. Like its past albums, Who Needs Who revolves around the husky vocals of Invie. Her somber piano playing and lingering vocal melodies create an undeniable bond as the record takes shape, retreating now and then to take refuge behind layers of instrumentation. For a band that has toured quite a bit, this new record sounds well travelled, less rooted in daydreaming whimsy than in everyday experiences. This might be most apparent in “Without You,” with its breezy, Parisian-style accordion, but it also shows itself lyrically on pieces like “Meet in the Dark” and “Patsy Cline”—well-rounded compositions containing some of the record’s most harrowing, personal performances. –Michael Nolledo
Efterklang: Piramida (4AD)
Efterklang can hear dead people, or so it seems. Perhaps that’s why the Danish postrock ensemble visited Pyramiden—a ghost town on the Arctic Norwegian island of Spitsbergen—to create its new album of similar name. At the abandoned Russian settlement, its members wandered a landscape of streams and mountains, recording the sounds of seabirds, footfall, and rushing wind. In the studio, they added the ethereal vocals of a choir and the chime-like peals of a glass-bottle collection. Whether or not these sounds are messages from another realm, they summon haunting melodies and shiver-inducing rhythms. It makes perfect sense, considering that “efterklang” means remembrance and reverberation. The album resonates with hints of the year 2000, re-imagined in a contemporary context