Today's Hotness: Barry Marino, Big Deal, Business Models

>> While Managing Editor Michael P. continues to manage SXSW, the everyday business of the blog goes on... This Today's Hotness is brought to you by the letter "B," in alphabetical order, sorta...

>> For the second year running, multi-instrumentalist and video director extraordinaire Barry Marino (who is perhaps best known to Clicky Clicky readers as drummer for Boston indie rock heroes The Hush Now) wrote and recorded an entire album during the month of February. This year's effort culminated with the release last week of the sparkling and curious eight-song collection February 2.0. Apparently the exercise is a bit more formalized than we had realized previously, as Mr. Marino's impressive feat is part of something called RPM Challenge, an event that encourages participants to record in a mere 28 days either 10 songs or 35 minutes of original material. Like his solid 2012 collection I Made These Gems In A Month, the new set strikes a balance between serene folk, hazy contemplation and upbeat electronic experimentalism, suggesting influences like Mazzy Star and U2 along the way. Up-tempo highlights "Level Planes" and the not entirely reassuring "We're Not Going To Guam" employ dance-ready rhythm tracks to anchor surreal, at-times-unsettling sentiments (the latter tune includes the brilliant line "half the stuff he says goes way over my head, the other half goes way, way over"). "The Subway Ninjas," a song apparently about being stuck on the subway with a jerk, a song that Google Translate improbably indicates is sung in Esperanto, uses bright guitar leads and a female guest vocal to conjure a breezy, South American vibe. Closer "White Knuckle" quietly echoes the verse of the aforementioned Irish quartet's "Ultra Violet." February 2.0, as well as the rest of Brooklyn-based Marino's work within and without The Hush Now, routinely finds ways to impress without being flashy or pedantic. Instead, there is a patience and ease to the music that somewhat downplays the cleverness and lucid imagery that are Marino's true hallmarks, all of which makes February 2.0 well worth your time and attention. We most recently heard from Marino in late 2012, when he sang the lead vocal for The Hush Now's annual holiday single (Marino also shot and starred in this video for the tune). In related news, The Hush Now is preparing the release of "Arkansas" as a digital single in the UK, to be followed by a digital UK release of the quintet's superlative 2011 long-player Memos. Incidentally, Marino is not the only member of the quintet releasing solo music these days: lead guitarist Adam Quane issued Tuesday a new collection of vibrant, textured psychedelia called O Orpheus Singing under his long-running No Evil Star moniker. You can check that out here; in the meantime tuck into Marino's February 2.0 via the Bandcamp embed below.



>> Big Deal announced last week it will release April 23 "In Your Car," the first proper single from the London-based dream-pop pair's planned sophomore set June Gloom. The captivating track maintains the act's new, noisy posture established via the early album two preview tune "Teradactol" last year. However, "In Your Car" ably harnesses the volume and attitude of "Teradactol" but successfully channels it into Big Deal's melodic and characteristically poignant pop. Indeed, the breezy, wistful chorus ("driving in your car / I wanna be wherever you are...") fits comfortably within the band's canon, particularly the music from Big Deal's brilliant full-length debut Lights Out. And perhaps it is just the title suggesting the correlation, perhaps it is the jarring opening notes, or perhaps it is the sweeping synth in the chorus, but we sense the second single also throws an affirmative nod toward Boston's own '80s pop legends The Cars and their tune "Just What I Needed." Sure, it's a fairly jarring evolution from the quiet, pretty harmonies and delicate guitar work of the band's debut single "Homework" from a few years ago, but those harmonies and Big Deal's deft ability to sound like it is constantly telling secrets persists even with the duo's contemporary "big band" sound. Mute will release "In Your Car" as well as the aforementioned full-length; June Gloom is slated for release June 4. As we reported here last month, Big Deal principals Alice Costelloe and Kacey Underwood have buttressed Big Deal's personnel with the addition of a rhythm section, which -- for the album sessions anyway -- included drummer Melissa Rigby. It's unclear who is playing bass with the band, or whether Ms. Rigby is part of Big Deal's touring unit, but we expect all of this will be revealed in time, as the presser announcing the single promises live dates will be announced soon. In the meantime, why not stream "In Your Car" over and over and over again as we have been doing?



>> Mr. Charlton was not overstating it during his assessment of the new Purling Hiss tune when he referred to a "strong wave of municipal all-stars" rising up out of Philadelphia these days. Indeed, the mental laundry list we maintain of Philly acts we need to monitor grows almost daily. At the top of the list today is Business Models, the new endeavor from ex-Algernon Cadwallader bassist and fronter Peter Helmis that also counts among its number former members of Ape Up! (Nick) and Man Without Plan (Barclay). The self-described "post-pop-punk" trio has released to Bandcamp under the title Room preliminary mixes of four songs from a "forthcoming bunch of songs." The music maintains the melodicism and energy of Algernon Cadwallader, but eschews that band's intricate guitar work in favor of chunky guitar chords. The resulting tunes recall the city's best West Philly-styled punk and brings to mind in particular Clicky Clicky faves Armalite, whose self-titled 2006 set was among this blog's favorite of that year. We strongly suggest streaming Room via the Bandcamp embed below -- it is all killer and no filler. The trio played some tour dates in Boston and Amherst earlier this month, so we expect that might be the last we see of Business Models until a record comes out, but who knows. Here's a video of them playing "The Aptitude," one of the four jams from Room.

Review: The War On Drugs | Slave Ambient

Philadelphia-based The War On Drugs' towering second full-length, Slave Ambient, is an agreeably loose (but emotionally prodigious) consortium of oasis and mirage. The so-called psych-Americana act's more formalized compositions are oasis, mappable destinations; soundscapes (like the roaring greyscale inferno "Original Slave") that form the firmament between are the mirage, beautiful, impossible to reach out and touch. All of it sits together as a series of supraliminal dreams you can't quite remember, just images that will spring to mind with surprising sharpness but questionable clarity. Which is to say that Slave Ambient doesn't communicate as a sequence of discrete riffs and lyrics, but as a holistic collage of awesome.

This fuzzy presence is more pronounced on Slave Ambient than on on its terrific predecessor Wagonwheel Blues, as Drugs songwriter and fronter (and Dover, Mass. native) Adam Granduciel said in a recent interview that in writing and recording Slave Ambient he didn't really re-work lyrics, and in some instances recorded them in just a few takes long on improvisation. Adding to the slippery now that is this new collection is that a reel of music -- the eponymous slave ambient tracks -- was left to run in the background of the songs as they were mixed. Aurally there is a tension between the dense (and in places strong -- "Brothers" is loud, the rhythm tracks boom) wall of sound, and the fact that Slave Ambient's fever-dreamed construction can be quite delicate, a house of playing cards. Importantly, the record is best played very loud, as increased volume illuminates innumerable soft layers, renders the transparent diaphanous, and the diaphanous opaque, everything shifting in the 10-song set's deftly realized and fluid mix. Indeed, Granduciel said in still another recent interview that Slave Ambient was realized as much in the mix as it was in the writing and recording.

Droning but buoyed by mechanistic rhythm tracks that mirror Mr. Granduciel's regimented but drawling streams of Beat-echoing free verse, "Your Love Is Calling My Name" serves as an able proxy for the 2011 sound of the Drugs. The aural motifs (tremeloed guitar, spectral "Walk Of Life" synth, apparitions of feedback in the final thrilling moments) pile up, not in a pejorative way, but in the same way that elements in certain David Lynch films iterate: the more they are presented, the less certain things become, the more pronounced the aesthetics and sheer beauty. Still, the music's ebb and flow produces recognizable touchstones. "Brothers" has something of Stevie Nicks' "Stand Back" in either the lyrical weft or warp, perhaps it is Granduciel's declaration "looking out the window of my room / I'm looking out where something once ran wild." "Come To The City" at times approximates U2's "Bad," right down to Granduciel's "woo hoo" mid-way through the song (as an aside, it makes one wonder whether Granduciel was a Philadelphian as far back as 1985, and also suggests The Edge's signature guitar playing as a significant precursor to The War On Drugs' repetitive layering). The preview track that's been out in the wilds of the Internet for some time, "Baby Missiles," is just classic Drugs: cold mecha-shuffle, streaming vocals stamped with slap-back, Dire Straits-styled synth. The affecting "Blackwater" beautifully closes the album: the acoustic guitars are laid bare, the leads shimmer. The song's biggest victory may be making the waltz time almost inapparent, but it is the line "Remember me when you dissolve in the rain" that sticks with you.

Secretly Canadian released Slave Ambient Tuesday; the entire record can be streamed at SoundCloud right here. The War On Drugs' full-length debut Wagonwheel Blues was one of Clicky Clicky's top albums of 2008.

The War On Drugs: Internerds | Facebook | Twittah | YouTube

That Was The Show That Was: U2 | Gillette Stadium

[We are pleased to once again present to you the work of friend and former editor The Good Doctor. While he does not contribute often enough, The Good Doctor has previously graced these pages with reviews of a couple Yo La Tengo shows. More recently he called a lot of Ben Kweller fans homely here in February -- Ed.]

The guy talking about the big stadium rock show he went to last night has a lot in common with the guy talking about his trip abroad. No matter how much either one says he liked it, you’re bound to hear more about the parts that sucked. Trips abroad always involve a lot of bad airplane experiences and food poisoning, while tales of stadium rock shows are headlined by traffic jams and bad seats.

Irish commercial rock unit-shifters U2 filled well over half of the football field at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass. Sunday night with a metal sculpture that doubled as a stage and looked like a giant bug that had impaled itself on the Eiffel Tower. It’s unclear whether its comical size served only to provide spectacle or was conceived even a little bit to take up space in venues that a band like this must play to make money but are difficult to fill in this economy.

It’s a wonder to behold, 150 feet of steel supporting a 54-ton video screen assembled from nearly one million moving parts. The monstrosity takes four days to put together. They have three of these -- if I’m remembering the completely unverifiable press information I barely absorbed – so that they can keep the tour moving despite the glacial set-up schedule. So even if it’s there to displace sparser crowds where the pricier tickets are, who can fault a band willing to pour money and creativity onto the parts of the stadium where people won’t be standing? Is it a spider? Is it an octopus?

“We’ve got a spaceship,” Bono explained, finally taking the stage at approximately noon one week from now. The most time-consuming part of the set-up schedule is the very end, when the fans stand around waiting for the damn band to show up and start playing. The stadium vendors had long run out of beer, popcorn and mini-pizzas and had moved on to canned goods and pup tents. Everyone was already exhausted. Supporters Snow Patrol had begun the evening by threatening stadium patrons with a Bond-villain-like device that shot waves of boredom up and down the aisles. Most dodged the attack by keeping low and crawling toward lines of refugees hiding in the rest rooms. Others used pocket mirrors and whatever else was handy to fashion makeshift devices hoping to deflect the diabolically bland Irish cacophony.

But that was then. This was later, when Bono –- who is looking more and more like Robin Williams practically by the hour and also seems to have entered that stage of life when one starts to get shorter –- welcomed us to Spaceship 360.

"We’re not going anywhere without you," Bono called out, "Are you ready for the ride?"

“Hooray,” cheered the 90% of the audience whose sight lines weren’t blocked by the stage’s four colossally over-sized support beams.

“Screw you, Bono!” screamed the other ten percent.

And with that, on came the hits. Or at least a parade of album tracks that alternated between brand new (“Breathe,” “No Line on the Horizon,” “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight,” “Get on Your Boots”), recent (“Vertigo,” “Elevation,” “Stuck in a Song the Audience Can’t Get Out Of”) and arguably older (“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” “The Unforgettable Fire,” “Where the Streets Have No Name”).

They stayed away from the real vintage stuff, your “I Will Follow”s and the like. I was also knocked out by versions of “New Years Day” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday” that sounded like effort had gone in to stripping them down to recreate the original album versions. Not to be polished and anti-septic, but crank the songs out with the same life they had just over 25 years ago.

The big surprise was how much new stuff rocked since I expected it to sound like Sting sitting in a bubble bath, but no. This was catchy, fast, crisp modern rock the way it really is supposed to be –- if you’re lucky enough to be near the PA. I’ve been assured that high up in the stadium it sounded like mud.

About a half-dozen people where I work went to this show and all of them had a long series of complaints. A band that plays in a football stadium –- U2, Bruce Springsteen, even The Beatles -– could never please anybody. Football stadiums are for football games not art exhibitions. At the end of a football game there is a clear winner and loser. At the end of an art exhibition held in a football stadium, everyone feels subconsciously compelled to pinpoint the winner and loser and inevitably they look within themselves and plan a trip abroad. -- The Good Doctor