// Category Archive for: New Music Tuesday

Music Review: San Fermin, San Fermin

By Melissa Bratcher

San Fermin‘s self-titled debut is wildly ambitious. Full of songs that are like journeys, but journeys that end up in an entirely different place than you thought you might go, it’s a challenging, interesting listen. San Fermin is the brainchild of Yale-educated composer Ellis Ludwig-Leone, and he is ably backed by vocalists Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig (of Lucius) and Allen Tate.

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Music Review: Barrence Whitfield & The Savages, Dig Thy Savage Soul

By Chelsea Spear

The legendary Barrence Whitfield cut a curious figure during Boston’s college rock boom of the ’80s. As the frontman for the Savages, Whitfield attracted a diverse audience with his raucous live shows. The man could rock a high noon set at a street fair like it was a tiny, sweaty juke joint, and his cover of “Stop Twistin’ My Arm” lit up left-of-the-dial rock stations like WBCN. Sadly, no recording studio could quite represent Whitfield’s talent and energy. The kindest thing one can say about the compressed, high-endy production on his previous albums is that he stayed away from synth charts and gated drums.

Whitfield’s shows with the Savages won him the Best Live Act award from the Boston Phoenix, and he frequently embarked on well-attended tours of Europe. In the past fifteen years or so, though, he’s remained more visible as a clerk at the Record Exchange in Salem, MA, than on the concert stage. With labels like Third Man, Dap-Tone, and Bloodshot releasing new material by R&B legends, an interest in new material from Whitfield seemed inevitable. And so it came to pass that the venerable Barrence Whitfield and the Savages would release Dig Thy Savage Soul, an all-new record, in 2013, showing listeners around the world how it’s done.

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Music Review: The Copper Gamins, Los Niños de Cobre

By Chelsea Spear

Critics sometimes use the phrase “more fun to talk about than to listen to” when describing an album that plays with new ideas and approaches to music. The inverse—that an album is more fun to listen to than to review or discuss—doesn’t come up as frequently. Los Niños de Cobre is an album that would live up to the inverse of that phrase. The qualities that make it compulsively listenable—its straightforward simplicity and the band members’ passion and skill—also make it an elusive subject for review. The Copper Gamins have created an album that makes an ideal soundtrack to long walks in the early-morning magic hour and humid, sleepless nights. When I listen to it, I feel as though I’m under a spell, but finding words to match the shimmering music on this disc is like chasing balls of mercury with my bare hands.

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Music Review: White Lies, Big TV

By Less Lee Moore

The critical and commercial success of White Lies over the last few years should come as no surprise to those who’ve followed the band’s career closely. For their newest album, Big TV, White Lies are once again working with Ed Buller, who produced their debut To Lose My Life . . . The production on Big TV is more restrained than it was on Ritual, but that only allows the songs to shine more brilliantly. It feels like both a blending of the band’s first two albums and a further development of the band’s signature sound.

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Music Review: Demon Queen, Exorcise Tape

By Ricky Lima

Demon Queen‘s first album Exorcise Tape has been officially described by lead vocalist Zackey Force Funk as “really about satanic stripper shit.” I don’t think I’ve heard a more accurate description of an album in my life. Exorcise Tape is dark, sexy, and super catchy. Zackey Force Funk is totally right; this is the kind of music they’d play in a strip club in Hell, and if that’s the case, that’s a place I want to go to. Zackey Force Funk and TOBACCO have knocked it out of the park in their first collaboration.

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Music Review: The Fun Boy Three, The Fun Boy Three

By Melissa Bratcher

The re-release of The Fun Boy Three’s eponymous debut album makes for fascinating, exhausting listening. A mix of musical styles—ska, rocksteady, jazz, dancehall—primitive percussion, sharp horns, and smart harmonies, it all seems so light and pleasant. Until you listen to the lyrics. Politically aware and a capsule of the fear and paranoia of Thatcher’s Britain in the early 1980s, these are not songs for a blithe singalong. Which is good.

Hatching fully formed from the forehead of The Specials after feeling creatively stifled, Terry Hall, Lynval Golding, and Neville Staples created something bold. These songs didn’t need to be arranged for horns and female vocalists (though on several tracks they are joined by Bananarama, to great effect) and the result is stripped down and innovative. The Fun Boy Three sounds immediate still.

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Music Review: The Garden, The Life And Times Of A Paperclip

By Less Lee Moore

My introduction to The Garden was the video for “I Am A Woman.” I was immediately taken with the band’s sound and the low budget, nonsensical video that featured one member wearing women’s clothes and makeup. Music that sounds like Killing Joke and The Minutemen? Guys in drag? Sign me up.

The Life And Times Of A Paperclip is the Burger Records debut of the duo known as The Garden, 19-year-old identical twins named Wyatt (vocals, bass) and Fletcher (drums, drag) Shears, who started making music a couple of years ago. Although the album has 16 tracks, it’s only 19 minutes long, but the songs are so good, you’ll be happy to listen to it on repeat for a couple of hours at a time.

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Music Review: Soft Metals, Lenses

By Less Lee Moore

Soft Metals is an appropriate name for a band whose members initially bonded over analog synthesizers. The music of Patricia Hall and Ian Hicks has a hypnagogic quality that’s both solid and liquid. Their newest album, Lenses, continues this liminal exercise with various lyrical visions of love and lust. How you interpret the songs can depend on your mood or point of view.

Rather than relying on harsh textures, the washes of synths on Lenses are mostly fuzzy, sometimes squishy, but rarely piercing, and even then, only when it’s most effective. Hall’s chilly, voluptuous delivery is appropriate for music that’s overflowing with icy sensuality, frequently sounding like the lost soundtrack to a sci fi film from the late ’70s or early ’80s.

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Music Review: White Fence, White Fence (Reissue)

By Less Lee Moore

If you’ve become a fan of Tim Presley’s loopy, psychedelic White Fence but haven’t yet heard the eponymous debut, you’re in luck. Drag Records offshoot God? has reissued the album on vinyl. It’s probably the best format for a White Fence album.

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Music Review: The Blow Monkeys, Feels Like A New Morning

By Melissa Bratcher

The Blow Monkeys have returned and I didn’t even know I’d missed them. The aptly titled Feels Like A New Morning is a collection of hopeful songs, sung by a man who is clearly at a crossroads, and who sounds pretty damn comfortable with himself. I dig it.

In the eighties, The Blow Monkeys were known for their jazzy, poppy confections with thought-provoking lyrics (and Dr. Robert’s hair, because that was amazing). Now older and wiser, Robert Howard is still writing thinky lyrics, and knows his way around a hook. But these songs aren’t confections; they’re a bit more savory.

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