WRMC 91.1 FM On Rotation

Author: BENJAMIN GOLZE

Yee-haw! The new music has been rolling in like cattle at feeding time. So hang on to your chaps: it's time for a new music round-up.



The Flaming Lips - At War With the Mystics

This sucker is arguably the heavyweight of the season, and it will be interesting to see how people react to it. The Flaming Lips is one of indie rock's biggest acts, perhaps the biggest act, and a good number of people who associate themselves with this snobby sphere are openly fans of the band. It's been four years since their last album, "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots," polarized fans with its over-produced feel, and "At War With the Mystics" has been touted as a return to their heroin-inspired guitar rock roots.

Unfortunately, it doesn't really seem to have worked out. The album is a combination of extremely bizarre production choices, almost like the band decided which bleeps, bips, and other sounds would sound really weird and then wrote the songs around them. Opening single "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" showcases when this works out, with a capella vocal parts punctuating the group's signature pounding and crunching percussion. "The W.A.N.D.," is maybe the only song that reverts to the band's earlier sound, and, in doing so, does well. Besides those two, the best songs on "At War with the Mystics" are the slow ones, which is kind of weird for a Flaming Lips album. I'm at a loss about whether to recommend this or not, so I'll just leave it at that.



Mates of State - Bring it Back

Many critics have described this San Francisco-based husband and wife duo as sweet and charming. Maybe in principle they are - he plays drums, she plays keyboard, and they both sing. But their music is anything but sugary. I don't know if Mates of State invented the boy-girl vocal style, but they had already mastered it on their earlier albums, and it's in full effect here again. The way their voices intertwine on some of the slower songs such as "Like U Crazy" (a stupid title, I know) is perhaps where the description "charming" comes from. However, the pure quantity of pounding passion and sound they elicit from just those two instruments is overwhelming, and the songs are full of wrenching pop hooks that don't let go even after they've passed.



Built to Spill - You in Reverse

I know I did a preview of this a couple of weeks ago, but I finally got to listen to the full album, and it is, in a word, underwhelming. All three songs I based my preview on are simply amazing, but the others, well, not so much. The jam mentality that seems to have dominated the songwriting causes the sprawling guitar parts, Built to Spill's specialty, to fall flat. Pick up a single of "Goin' Against Your Mind" if you can. This album isn't really worth it.



Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones

This last album I haven't actually heard in full either: I've only heard two songs. So I'm going to avoid trying to extrapolate and hyping up a good preview of a bad album again, because I hear that it's pretty bad, which finishes off an early spring season of disappointing releases. Single "Gold Lion" and the other song "Cheated Hearts" sound like what I would expect from a band that emerged in the New York rock revival so ably lead by The Strokes a few years ago. The former features kick-you-in-the-gut percussion, and the band's signature female vocals (singer Karen O) on the latter add a healthy dose of sex to an otherwise standard, but very catchy, rock song.



Phew! That batch was tougher than sagebrush. Catch ya'll further on down the trail.