|
 True
to Form
By
Josh Potter
Ashley
Pond Band
The
Warning
It’s
tempting to use the term “slow burn” to describe the way many
tracks on The Warning spread from singer-songwriter
Ashley Pond’s acoustic sketches into fully formed roadhouse
arrangements. If you consider the ground covered between sultry
opener “No More West to Be Won” and disc-closing mini-epic
“The River,” the whole album is a slow burn. Indeed, it’s
a testament to the band’s range that it won’t become clear
to the listener until the snarling title track that we’re
dealing with a bona fide blues band here. However, for those
who have followed Pond since the release of Dala in
2007 and through the addition of bassist Sarah Clark and drummer
Scott Smith, this assertion should come as no surprise.
Cool composure runs through the uptempo tracks (“Breaking
Day,” “Wolf Man”) in the manner of Van Morrison, while achieving
a haunting, ethereal effect on the slower ones (“Meet Me”),
and the band—extended at times to include strings, reeds,
vibraphone, horns, and guitar work from Eric Halder—never
assert themselves more than the song demands. Even in their
mature, fleshed-out configuration, the group still are ultimately
about supporting Pond’s enchanting and virtuosic voice, which
tends to steal the attention from her equally impressive guitar
playing. With the full band, tracks like “There You Are” trade
what could be easy comparisons to Ani DiFranco and ’90s femme
rockers for nods to Janis Joplin and Robert Plant. Never hesitating
to draw a note out for its full effect, and warbling just
outside a lyric’s point of resolution, Pond reaches for something
more elemental than an acoustic songwriter’s average confessional
fare.
Given the band’s penchant for the blues, ’70s production values,
and owl iconography—not to mention a recent Alive at Five
opening slot—it’s also tempting to draw some parallels between
Pond and Burlington act Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. If
the latter’s steep ascent can be read as an omen, it’s probably
safe to say that things are just getting started for the Ashley
Pond Band.
 NOMO
Invisible
Cities
Given
the genre’s relative consistency with the way it sounded 30-some-odd
years back when Fela Kuti coined the term, it’s easy to forget
that Afrobeat has always been a hybrid form. Nowadays, no
music is safe from some cross-pollination, so it was only
a matter of time before a few (mostly) white dudes from Ann
Arbor, Mich. got their hands on Afrobeat and threw in a couple
hyphens. NOMO have been around for a few years now, but Invisible
Cities is their clearest articulation of a style that
includes a healthy dose of electronic and experimental elements.
Democratic, like the liberation movements Afrobeat has always
championed, and true to the Italo Calvino reference in its
title, each track is a small world built of simple, looping
textures, delicately orchestrated yet powerfully executed.
Present are the syncopated percussion, insistent basslines
and haughty horn arrangements common to the form, but underneath
it all, it’s not uncommon to hear an electric finger-piano,
scrap-metal percussion, preset electronics, or a chorus of
conch shells. Saxophones solo in and out of polyrhythmic drum
figures before making hard left turns into brand new time
signatures. It might be a stretch to call this stuff post-Afrobeat,
as some are, but it’s worth noting that the influence of Charles
Mingus, Sun Ra, and Miles Davis is felt here at least as much
as that of Kuti. The band spell this out even more clearly
by covering American avant composer Moondog’s piece “Bumbo.”
Which begs the question, as an Afrobeat band, where do you
go from there?
—Josh
Potter
 Ear
Pwr
Super
Animal Brothers III
It
really puts things in perspective to wonder, these days, why
everyone’s so happy in Baltimore. But the question’s valid:
Due to Dan Deacon and Wham City’s influence, the Charm City
is becoming known more for its caffeinated kitsch pop than
its rusting industry and high crime rate. Haters call the
whole bedazzled puff-paint freak-out shallow and escapist,
but it’s also really fun.
Electropop duo Ear Pwr are a case in point. If the album title
recalls a long-lost Nintendo game, this is no coincidence.
Devin Booze’s untz-y beats and 8-bit synth hooks sound
as if they’re lifted from NES classics like Contra, while
Sarah Reynolds’ vocal approach is bubbly and aerobic, floating
along with the non-sequitur logic of Wesley Willis. Songs
like “Sparkley Sweater” (“you’re my favorite, favorite shirt”),
“Ghostride the Buffalo,” and “Boyz II Volcanoes” are self-conscious
three-minute blasts of early-’90s techno in the vein of bands
like Aqua. Booze plays hype-man to Reynolds, who spouts beautiful
bits of Fruity Pebbles psychedelia like “drink that glitter,”
“diamonds falling from the sky as Alan Jackson began to cry,”
and “there’s kitties in the pyramids, there’s kitties underground”
on “Cats is People, Too.” It’s the sort of stuff that’s dying
to be animated by the likes of spazz-collage artists Paper
Rad.
As listening to the album front-to-back can test one’s patience,
ideal operating instructions are as such: Listen to one toxically
infectious track on repeat until it drives you crazy, then
tuck it into the middle of a party mix for safekeeping. It’s
guaranteed to make unsuspecting listeners uncommonly happy.
—Josh
Potter
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