This Is Anne

Anne are a fledgling Portland, OR quartet who have laid down their heavy hardcore roots in lieu of a soothing brand of music that has the sonic rush of a late afternoon drive down PCH.  Their music is best described as a wash of vocals drifting over bright guitar melodies that, even when distorted, emerge beautifully through the cascade of warm gain and overdrive.  Their self-titled, 5-track demo, which is available as a free download here, shimmers with a forceful energy while still maintaing a tranquil ambience akin to West Coast contemporaries The Meeting Places.

The songs on the free download are short, poignant, and memorable; accessible; catchy.  Although Anne is an upstarting band in the Portland area, its members have pasts filled with touring on independent labels.  Departing from their individual groundings in punk and hardcore music, they now find themselves advancing in a new direction toward subtlety and simplicity (and, f—, is it good!). 

Find out the latest on Anne here.

Ceremony Blast Listeners With “Rocket Fire”

In the beginning, there was rock ‘n’ roll.  Then musicians began evolving and trying to outdo their forerunners, all the while forgetting that they were simply advancing the musical “wheel”, and not necessarily creating anything entirely new altogether.  Categories, sub genres, locales… it’s all so tiring, really.

Ceremony realize this and cultivate a sound that spans boundaries and time with overdriven guitar tones, not to mask sub-standard guitar playing or a creative deficit, but to craft one hell of a “wheel” that takes listeners from zero to ass-to-the-wall in less than a second. And whether they gaze at their shoes, the stars, or deep into your eyes, it’s still rock ‘n’ roll to us.  

What makes Ceremony’s recent full-length, Rocket Fire, so relevant is not necessarily what they’re doing, but how they’re doing it and why.  The emotional appeal of each song on the album hits in all the right spots: the sentimental songs are lovely, the angst-ridden songs are fierce, and throughout, each note played and each rhythm created isn’t lost on the listener for lack of purpose within the music.  The intensely distorted guitars grind and shriek their way across many of the tracks, slicing through auditory hemispheres with a grit unknown since JAMC’s Psychocandy.

But while much of Psychocandy‘s beauty may have been too drowned in distortion for the average listener, Ceremony flesh out the deeply melodic appeal of Rocket Fire to ensure their eternal sweep of fuzz only accents each track while not destroying them completely.  Guitar and bass pedals don’t make a song, or a musician, for that matter, but Ceremony prove that meticulously weaving them into music makes for one forceful album that seems could only be propelled by rocket fire.  And the album does take off like a rocket.  The opening blast of “Stars Fall” had us turning down the normal listening level of our iPods and car stereos as the entire album’s volume hits a little harder than your average LP.  Even “softer” songs like lovelorn “Marianne” and “Regret” peak at levels indicative of why venues have asked (and often rudely) the Virginia duo to stop live shows.

Rocket Fire is an album beautifully out of its time, yet unwaveringly timeless.  In an era where so many bands try desperately to create something different, Ceremony have carved their difference with full sonic control over traditional song structures, creating an epic album full of immensely memorable hooks that translate easily across various palettes.

The Fauns Sail the Emotional Spectrum, Return with Gold

The Fauns is one of those bands whose musical appeal is every filmmaker’s wet dream.  While it may be cliché to compare the tracks of the Bristol six-piece’s self-titled debut album to a movie soundtrack, it’s difficult listening to most of the 11-track album without imagining interior shots of elevated train rides, protagonist looking out the windows expectantly as the golden sunlight of a waning afternoon sifts between buildings of an urban sprawl, etc., etc., etc…

But aside from the obvious statements about The Fauns’ music, the debut album really wrangles a drifting landscape of various emotions, neatly packaged into 11 tracks that could play endlessly and purposefully in the background of any situation.  Although the main focus of their sound seems to be a light, feathery female voice, The Fauns nestle it comfortably within delicate folds of intricately woven guitars, bass, percussion, and electronics, essentially obscuring any main driving force behind their music while simultaneously creating the necessity for the sum of its parts’ presence for true efficacy.

Perhaps the most representative sampling of The Fauns on their self-titled debut is the sequence of tracks 4, 5, and 6 — “The Sun is Cruising,” “Fragile,” and “Road Meets the Sky,” respectively.  At its very center, The Fauns’ music is a melancholic nostalgia — not quite sorrow, but bittersweet — encased in catchy pop melodies.  Each song is crafted like a story with an instrumental prologue in which not all of the musical counterparts have unified until finally spilling over into an orchestrated movement of warm, rich layers and aural textures.  Once the full-on orchestra of each song has reached its apex, the song not so much ends as it does float to a calm stop, and just as this is true of most of the debut’s songs, it is definitely true of the entire album: an emotionally-charged central core draped in drifts of warmth.

“Shall I see you again?…”  Definitely.

- N. Gonzales

The Pains of Being an Up-and-Coming Indie Pop Artist

What’s with NYC?  One of the more recent indie all-stars to gain international attention are The Pains of Being Pure at Heart.  With songs dressed in catchy pop beats that, at times, approach The Cure circa “Galore” and a vocal sensibility akin to Starlet, it’s easy to see why listeners have welcomed this NY quartet into the glow of the alternative spotlight.

Bright, evenly-fuzzed guitars and a tremendous interplay of vocals between Kip Berman and Peggy Wang mark the brilliance of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart.  Their mature brand of indie pop has earned them stage rights among legendary giants such as Swervedriver and My Bloody Valentine.

Their self-titled debut, released earlier this year on Slumberland Records, has received international attention and even peaked at #9 on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart.  This is definitely a band worth tracking.