Is history set to repeat itself for Stephen Malkmus? When Pavement recorded their fifth album, they chose uber-producer Nigel Godrich to handle the job, one of many nails in Pavement’s eventual coffin, and an album that divided fans. For Mirror Traffic, Malkmus opted for another famous, but untested as a producer, to chair the sessions in Beck Hansen. Is Mirror Traffic to be the tepid equivalent of Terror Twilight? Is Malkmus taking a leaf from fellow Beck-produced Thurston Moore and opting for a pared back approach? Yes (head straight to CSN&Y folk-rockin’ “No One Is (As I Be) for a taste”) and no, but mostly no.

It’s a diverse and involved beast on first listen, tracks sit together uncomfortably and lack cohesion. Instrumentation is more involved and the presence of slide guitar is noticeable, seemingly influenced by the laidback Malibu vibe that lingers over the album (“Long Hard Book” for example). The involved melody work-out of “Tigers” is something that you could almost picture on the Southern rock affectations of Pavement’s Wowee Zowee. No longer prone to extended prog-rock lead guitar work-outs, Malkmus’ wandering left-hand has been tamed (the solo freakery of “Brain Gallop” aside) and it’s back to business as usual, circa 1994.

With the Pavement reunion crossed off hardcore fans and newbies lists, future allegiances to Malkmus’ work is on shaky ground, which seems ironic in that Mirror Traffic is the most Pavement sounding album in his solo canon. But still, you want growth and maturity and Malkmus seems incapable of being anything but a grey-haired ex-slacker in sneakers and a ringer tee making lyrically irreverent indie guitar music. Which is fine when you’re in your twenties, but as your audience ages with you, (“I can’t even do one sit-up/sit-ups are so bourgeoisie”) does it still have the same effect?

Mirror Traffic has its moments (“Tigers”, “Stick Figures In Love”, the “Mr. Blue Sky” bounce of “Forever 28″), much the same way as Real Emotional Trash and Face The Truth before it had theirs too. Put together they might add up to something, but not nearly as much as they should on their on and at 15 tracks, Mirror Traffic is just too damn long. As the first generation of indie rock icons hit uncharted late-adulthood, the expectations to remain true to their art persist, but look around and you’ll see that you’re one step away from jamming with your kids’ friends’ dads in your basement and remembering what it was like when you played Lollapalooza with the greats of your generation. Boy, didn’t we have a blast.

Spencer Krug is one of those songwriters who is as obsessed with the semantics and process of art as he is with art itself. One consequence of this is that he will not pass up an opportunity to switch monikers if it seems appropriate. And so, with Wolf Parade on hiatus and Sunset Rubdown a full-on band, no longer the outlet for lo-fi scribbles it once was, we get Moonface, which is, as Krug writes in a press release, “not a band, just plain half-old me, in any solo or collaborative projects I’m involved in from now until whenever.”

This full-length album is a follow-up to last year’s Dreamland EP: Marimba and Shit-Drums. With this new project Krug is being nothing if not descriptive: just as Dreamland was a misty exploration of dream played entirely on marimba and atrociously-recorded drums, Organ Music is a series of swirling, mid-tempo organ ballads.

In the press release Krug writes that his intention was to make a drone album, but somewhere along the line his pop sensibilities took over. I’m afraid we got the worst of both worlds: Organ Music is too plodding to be great pop and too riff-filled to be great drone. Krug has proven himself one of indie pop’s most interesting songwriters, and whether you find his voice compelling or annoying (I’m in the former camp), it’s difficult to totally discount his unique song structure and instrumentation. But most of that is absent here, which leads me to believe that Krug draws strength from his collaborators; without them he produces an album that is not terrible but is certainly mediocre, and frankly an astonishing departure from the high quality of recent releases by Wolf Parade and Sunset Rubdown.

Opener “Return to the Violence to the Ocean Floor” is far and away the album’s best song, but it’s unclear to me whether this has more to do with the song itself or with the fact that the mid-tempo-organ-and-fake-drums shtick has not yet become exhausting. In any case, the organ riffs swirl around each other interestingly and the melody and lyrics are good. “Whale Song (Song Instead of a Kiss)” begins intriguingly, but builds far too slowly and completely burns out by the halfway point. “Fast Peter,” though initially catchy and certainly clever in a deadpan sort of way (“So Peter loves a girl/The way that only Peter does/He told me all about it on the balcony/When we were high on drugs”), is not interesting enough to sustain its runtime, especially given the insufferable three-minute coda. By the time we get to “Shit-Hawk in the Snow,” the organ’s timbre and the murky reverb on Krug’s voice have become grating, and this track ends up little more than an annoyance. “Loose Heart = Loose Plan” is mercifully bouncy and groovy, and it is not only the album’s shortest track (6:39), but also the only one that does not overstay its welcome.

Count this as one only for the truly Krug-obsessed. All others are unlikely to be willing to forgive the monotony and self-indulgence. This doesn’t shatter my face in Krug, but it does make me doubt his ability to flourish without the creative influence of at least a bandmate or two.

Warpaint are to release live favourite “Billie Holiday” as their next single on September 19. The track has been mixed by Pulp bassist Steve Mackey and is a complete re-working of the original version from their debut EP Exquisite Corpse, produced by John Frusciante (ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers).

Warpaint’s record label Rough Trade explained, “It was felt that the single did not get enough ears the first time around, and as it’s always been a band favourite it only seems right to re-release it now that they are a little more well known”. The track will appear on a deluxe reissue of debut album The Fool (also out on September 19) packaged together with the EP.

With the girls coming to the end of touring for the album, and talk of the writing and recording their follow-up under way, hopefully something new from the Warpaint camp will appear before the end of the year (wishful thinking?). Until then, you can stream the Steve Mackey mix of “Billie Holiday” below, while the full tracklisting for The Fool Deluxe Edition looks like this…

Disc 1.

“Set Your Arms Down”
“Warpaint”
“Undertow”
“Bees”
“Shadows (Neon Lights Remix)”
“Composure”
“Baby”
“Majesty”
“Lissie’s Heart Murmur”

Disc 2.

“Stars”
“Elephants”
“Billie Holiday (Steve Mackey mix)”
“Beetles”
“Burgundy”
“Krimson”

With a brand new Throwing Muses album waiting in the wings, the 25th anniversary of Throwing Muses debut has arrived, with 4AD issuing the first ever compilation of the band’s work, simply entitled Anthology, on September 5. Compiled by the band, the first American act to sign to 4AD, the twenty-one track selection eschews most of the singles in favour of personal favourites, and enjoys a non-chronological sequence. The initial limited release comes in a hardback book with a bonus twenty-two track CD of B-sides and rarities.

In light of the release of Anthology, Kristin Hersh had this to say:

”It’s beautiful and substantial, thanks to awesome David Narcizo / Lakuna Design – a chunky, 28 page hardcover booklet and two CDs – one CD consisting of a hand-selected retrospective track-list by Kristin, David and Bernard, and on the other the collected B-sides, including the original Lonely is an Eyesore version of “Fish”, the long-lost “Hillbilly” and the original version of “Back Road (Matter of Degrees)”. And yes, the release will be supported by Throwing Muses live dates.”

Throwing Muses tour dates for October and November have now been confirmed.

October:
24th – Amsterdam, Paradiso, NETHERLANDS
25th – Berlin, Postbahnhof, GERMANY
26th – Copenhagen, Vega, DENMARK
27th – Ghent, Handelsbeurs, BELGIUM
29th – Madrid, Shoko, SPAIN

November:
1st – Bexhill, De La Warr Pavilion, UK
2nd – London, Shepherds Bush Empire, UK
3rd – Norwich, University of East Anglia, UK
4th – Holmfirth, Picturedrome, UK
6th – Manchester, Academy 2, UK
7th – Glasgow, Oran Mor, UK
8th – Cardiff, The Gate, UK
10th – Dublin, Academy, EIRE

Minneapolis has a great history when it comes to producing hungry young guitar bands, starting in the late 70′s with The Replacements and Hüsker Dü, arriving at the present day with a fresh-faced quartet known as Howler. It’s an opening spin too good to refuse for a new band on their debut release, but unless you’re alcoholics in training on a hardcore bent, you may as well just acknowledge the obvious and get on with it.

For a label famous for swooping on bands like The Strokes and The Libertines in their musical infancy, Rough Trade might be onto something here. Much like The Smith Westerns and The Drums, two bands they possess a strikingly similarity with, Howler have the art of writing hook-filled pop tunes that boil over with surf-guitar riffs and jittery beats downpat. There’s just nothing spectacularly new here. Howler are perfect for the right now, which means they’re perfect to be the next big thing until the next big thing comes along.

The Jay Reatard revival begins on opener “I Told You Once”" with the doubled acoustic and electric guitars riding each other over handclaps and disaffected lyrical self-loathing. The other four tracks rattle along in much the same passive delivery/urgent action fashion. The EP’s title track shamelessly steals two lines (but let’s call it ‘an homage’) from The Replacements “Within Your Reach”  and “You Like White Women, I Like Cigarettes” is worth mentioning for title alone, but lines like “I want a girl and a new car/a drink and a guitar” make it sound like a spoilt white kids Christmas list. Which it probably is.

A long time ago I was in college, and one fateful day in between stressing out about girls and how I was going to finish all my papers before next Wednesday, I wandered into my local record shop and heard a band that would eventually shape my musical life. Fruit Bats’ Mouthfuls was like nothing I’d ever heard before; granted, the music I listened to back then was pretty questionable, but I knew good music when I heard it. I just needed to find it. I played that CD over and over, sharing it with anyone who would lean in and catch a sample of it blaring from my over-sized headphones.

Ironically, Fruit Bats are pretty standard when it comes to indie folk bands, and what was so revolutionary to me just under a decade ago is now the status quo. But there’s something to be said for a band who puts forth reliably solid records even if there’s nothing blogmongeringly incredible about it.

Where as Fruit Bats’ 2009 Ruminant Band was extroverted and poppy, Tripper is laid back, rooted in familiar acoustic guitars, and subtle. Lead singer/songwriter Eric Johnson relied heavily upon the band’s contributions earlier, and now he returns to something much more personal, and even introduces narratives unlike anything he’s crafted before. “Tony the Tripper” kicks things off with stout acoustic guitars and leaves everything else, including the slide guitars and jangling piano keys, tucked away and in the background. “So Long” continues this trend, layering faint instrumentals with Johnson’s trademark falsetto and quirky chord changes.

The album as a whole is nothing Fruit Bats’ fans are unfamiliar with, and some critics may even think of it as a misstep after such an ambitious last record, but the changes in Johnson’s usual songwriting are so carefully weaved into each song that they’re unbelievably easy to miss. The lyrical echoes and nods to lo-fi recordings, the extension of the falsetto’s role, the whimsical contrasts between the alt-country flavor of “Tangie and Ray” and the organ-stomper “Dolly”; all of these amount to an album that’s satisfying while staying under the radar and even a bit underwhelming on the first couple listens.

Which might also explain the reason that Fruit Bats haven’t exactly become a mainstream success despite the consistent quality on every album. Their particular brand of indie folk is effortless and sweet; the proverbial girl next door. It’s easy to miss if you’re not looking for it. And while Tripper probably won’t be the album that puts them on the map, it’s another excellent record in a canon that gets better and better with each release.

You must be excited and relieved that the album is out?

Yes, very exciting. I started work on it about a year ago, so I’m really excited people can hear it and buy it and come and see us play.

When you were touring here with the band in December, you were obviously working on it, but there wasn’t that much of a temptation to take the live band into the studio to make the album? Is that still your own sacred domain when it comes to Washed Out?

I think so. Mainly because that’s just the way I’ve always worked and the creative process for me is a very mindless thing. I just sit down at the computer and just kind of get lost in the recording and the layering of things. It would be much harder to do that with five other guy in the room, I think. Maybe one of these days I’ll bring’em in, but not yet. (laughs)

I guess taking them out on tour must be enough to stretch your people managing skills?

Exactly. I definitely have to take on the role of the dad of the group. There’s a couple of youngsters in the band, and my wife tours with us as well, so we’re the mom and dad keeping tabs on the other band members.

Was it challenge enough then to bring in the outside producer to help out on Within and Without, ‘cos Ben Allen came in to sort of, help you finish off the record. Was that his role?

Exactly. I had those songs recorded to the best of my ability and I knew that I needed help to sort of take them to the place I wanted, which was much bigger, sort of anthemic sounding songs. I was a huge fan of his work and luckily he had about ten days off inbetween a couple projects he was working on, so we did 12 hour days in the studio here in Atlanta to wrap everything up. He’s an amazing guy and an amazing producer.

It’s interesting to hear you use a word ‘dynamic’ when describing the record because it seems like you’ve probably taken with relish the chance to spread your wings a bit and try some stuff you hadn’t been able to do on those early Washed Out singles and EPs. Did it feel like you had a broader canvas for the album?

Exactly. Having played a years worth of live shows really informed this material as well. Just playing in front of an audience there, a couple of things I picked up that make the entertaining side of playing music much easier and so there are a couple of moments on the record that were written specifically for the live show. So we’re really excited to get out there and start playing again.

The first taste we got of the album was that boy/girl duet of “You and I” that you did with Caroline from Chairlift. Was that a thing you could cross of your list, to be able to do a boy/girl duet?

Yeah, well it’s funny that I never really collaborated with someone on writing a song together and a TV network here in the States, Adult Swim, commissioned us to work on a song and it really opened my eyes to that side of songwriting. I had the chorus structure of the song written and took it to her and she took the song to a completely different direction that I probably would never have thought of and made the song that much better. So I’m excited to maybe work with her again, hopefully, and if not her, other musicians maybe on this next record.

Writing songs like that seems to have brought out a bit of your songsmith side, because another track on the album like “A Dedication” is practically your Billy Joel/Elton John piano ballad.

That’s probably the closest I’ll get to that type of song. I grew up playing piano, so that’s really how I learned to play music and think about music. But I definitely hadn’t used a piano before on a Washed Out track and I sort of liked ending the record on a much different note. It was the last song I worked on so it fit to be the last song on the record.

Are you ready for lighters aloft for that song in the live show?

(laughs) That’d be great. I’d have to work it out. It’d be great to bring out a bunch of horn players to pull off the final section of the song. Maybe if the budget gets a little better we can pull that off.

In amongst the power ballad moments there are the more atypical Washed Out tracks, but I like how disco you’ve also gone on a song like “Soft”. So even with the dancier stuff you’re trying on a few different genres than you had before.

Exactly. That again probably has a lot to do with playing live shows. I really don’t like the idea of boring people at the shows. We try to play more of the upbeat numbers and maybe up the tempo for some of the slower numbers. The live shows are meant to be, I wouldn’t say necessarily a dance party, but it’s upbeat enough to dance and have a good time to.

It also seems that apart from being informed by the live show, the Washed Out album has been a good way to show off all these influences. It’s something that you seem to get asked about a terrible lot.

Yeah, I kind of grab from a number of different genres and that also sort of shaped what the record sound like. I didn’t want it to be a dance record or a hip-hop record. I wanted it to be somewhere inbetween all of these places, so that type of thinking really shaped things. I wanted everything to sound really balanced, and if I used a really heavy kick sound that is really dance music indebted, I wanted to balance that with more live instrumentation to sort of make everything balance. That was a big part of the record as well.

Also telling is this recent BBC 6 music mix that you did. In amongst all the cool stuff, the seminal artists like DJ Shadow, you did have the block of cheese that is 10CC’s “I’m Not In Love”.

That’s a great song through and through. If that’s not cool then that’s the listener’s problem. I love that song and I like to think that my work is sort of in that same mindset of it’s definitely a pop song, but also a song you can get lost in, and so I like that quality about it.

You also said something interesting about that mix, when sampling you’re looking for a noise or a texture, so you’re more informed by the feel of samples than say beats or rhythm.

Definitely. And that came out of just trying to do something different with sampling. When I started out making proto-typical hip-hop songs I quickly realised it had been done a million times before, like sampling old breaks or James Brown songs, so I was really interested in using non-traditional sounds and that sort or led to much weirder either ambient or disco stuff that I was into. I’m always listening for interesting sounds to use.

The other component of the album of course is its packaging. Have many people come back to you about the raunchy artwork for Within and Without? Are you getting sold in a brown paper bag in Walmart?

It’s really funny to me. I never anticipated that, and I can totally understand that interpretation now but to me it was more innocent than that. I wasn’t thinking about it being this provocative, shocking thing. It’s really funny seeing the response and that was definitely the initial response from most people.

You put skin somewhere and people jump up and down. Your response then sounds like you’re in front of the PMRC or something. It sounds as if you’ve already got your response rehearsed.

No, no. It’s a lot of fun. Actually my label in the UK has gotten together an installation at Rough Trade in London and they’re going to have a bed-in, where they have an actual bed in the store where you can lay down and listen to the record, so I thought that was kind of poking fun at that as well.

People are actually going to be recreating that sleeve in the middle of a record store.

Exactly. That’s the idea. That would be great.

Do people keep asking you if it’s your back? Do you have to keep telling people it’s not you?

Yeah, I have. I have been asked that quite a bit and it’s not my back. Maybe it would’ve been a better story if it had been my back, but no, it was just an image I saw in a photography magazine I really liked.

You can save your nude run up for album number two…

(laughs) Exactly.

Interview broadcast on Static on 14/07/11. Static can be heard on Sydney’s 2SER (107.3 FM) and via the Internet (www.2ser.com) every Thursday evening (AEST).

Long Island’s Twin Sister channel a little Tom Tom Club on “Bad Street”, the first single taken from their forthcoming album In Heaven due out September 26 on Domino Records. We gave away this track as a free download not too long ago, but the band have since shot a video clip shot at lead singer Andrea Estella’s family’s house in Long Island, populated by her bandmates, friends and family, giving off an 80′s suburban house party vibe to match the track’s carefree summer bounce. Webcuts totally fell for Twin Sister’s 2010 double-EP combo Color Your Life / Vampires With Dreaming Kids, in particular the exquisite dreampop shimmy of “All Around And Away We Go”, so it’s only expected that we’ll excitedly prick up our ears at the sound of fresh rumblings from their camp and report on. Twin Sister have also just announced a 10 date UK and Irish tour for the autumn, kicking off at Cargo in London on October 25 and ending at The Grand Social in Dublin on November 12.

I really like Zach Rogue, and I’ve been a Rogue Wave fan since Descended Like Vultures hit indie music listeners’ ears like the gentle slap of a thousand feathers (it doesn’t rock out, but it doesn’t sit still either), but I fear we may be too far into “wuss rock” territory here. The fact that this album was released on Jack Johnson’s label kind of speaks for itself, and there is very little on the album to suggest the music is attempting to break away from that particular bit of pigeon-holing.

Of course that doesn’t make Rogue’s solo project, published under the name Release The Sunbird, bad, or even unlistenable. In fact, far from it. The first couple songs suggest a throwback sound to some of Rogue Wave’s best work; strong acoustic guitars and brightly harmonized melodies. The opening track even reintroduces a hefty organ, recalling the brilliant Asleep At Heaven’s Gate as opposed to the more recent electronic and experimental Permalight. And the title track follows with similar leanings of this classic material, and both cuts end quickly, two and three minutes respectively, leaving the listener sufficiently nostalgic without much pause for thought.

But the album digs its hole and stays there. The longest song maxes out at just over four minutes, none of the music stretches past the acoustic guitars and cutesy arrangement formula, and none of the songs are particularly inventive. It also skates past the introverted brooding that made Rogue Wave’s earlier music so indulgent and remains fairly upbeat throughout the record.

To reiterate, it’s not unlistenable. There’s a lot of pretty stuff here to enjoy. “Outlook’s Anonymous” and “A New You” are peaceful and tender; the album’s first single, “Always Like The Son” exhibits bright, expansive songwriting. And there isn’t any music on the album that’s wasted, each cut seems to have gotten the full Rogue treatment of top-notch studio production without sounding hallowed-out from too much editing, maintaining the personal feel and genuine spirit of his music.

Part of my musical evolution lately has simply turned me off to music that’s too wimpy, for lack of a better term. There’s folksy and there’s wussy, and somehow, Zach Rogue minus the band lacks enough clout to bridge the gap. There’s actually more here that draws from the whisper-soft folk of bands like Kings of Convenience than older Rogue Wave. And that sort of music has its place, but it doesn’t prove as durable to me as some of its more rugged contemporaries. Especially when, as on Come Back To Us, it’s so demonstrably unoriginal.

Towards the end of this album is a song called “Spoiler Alert”, in which two separate drivers, sung in separate audio channels, sing simultaneously about the events leading up to a collision. Weaving melodic lines like a musical number, one voice sings about his belief that the vehicle can drive itself, while the other voice is distracted with writer’s block just before seeing the oncoming truck.

The song ends with intertwined passages of “I can’t believe I haven’t tried this before/I’m letting go!” and “What the hell/What the hell?” before a flute takes over and plays us out. This right here could be the song of the year. This trademark dark humour over bright and cheerful music isn’t anything new, but the depth of TMBG’s ridiculous imaginations and surreal, lyrical stories hasn’t been this blatantly creative since they were just two guys with a drum machine in the 80’s.

For longtime fans, a barrage of catchy rockers like “Can’t Keep Johnny Down” and “Judy Is Your Viet Nam” has to be exciting since almost all of the last decade has been dedicated to children’s albums and a handful of less-than-inspired LPs. But They Might Be Giants go even further than this by not only re-establishing their nerd rock clout with several two-minutes-or-less rockers, but by also showing us they still have a knack for the nonsensical, the obscure, and the delightfully grim.

Thus, we’re treated to songs like “Three Might Be Duende”, involving one of the most difficult Spanish words to translate that connotate a mythical, artistic creature; a horn-laden, head-bobber looking forward to the date of a horrible person’s death (and the way they’ll celebrate it, including giving the entire band shout-outs) on “When Will You Die”; and an acoustic finger-snapper of a song with spoken stage direction barked out by call-and-response style verses on “Protagonist”. Without a doubt, this is TMBG at their quirkiest, catchiest and most clever.

Which has to be completely reassuring for so many loyal fans waiting for the kind of silly gold that made They Might Be Giants a cult alt-rock favourite for so many years. Without completely ripping off their old material, TMBG has fashioned a throwback album of 18 songs that finish before they get started, leaving the listener both amused at what they’ve just heard and craving more. And where there used to be MTV to showcase videos and dial-a-song to release new demos, there is now podcasts, YouTube and Twitter, and hopefully, with an album of such strong material, new fans will take notice and become hooked like so many of us did so many years ago.