Flock of Dimes—Head of Roses

Head of Roses is a heartfelt and springly sophomore from Flock of Dimes (Jenn Wesner). Wesner is best-known as a member of Wye Oak but with this, and 2016’s If You See Me, Say Yes, she has carved a definitive, confident line as a solo artist.

What impresses immediately is Head of Roses’ broad soundscape. Every track on the LP does something to be sonically distinct—but none is an outlier or ugly duckling. “Price of Blue” and “No Question” are striking both in their differences and similarities. The former is a full-on Cocteau Twins-style ballad, lifted by exultant and airy strings; the latter is muggy, stripped-back and intimate, grounded by powerful brass. Their commonality is Wesner’s unique artistic sensibility, a quality as hard to describe as it is easy to recognise.

It’s lazy and flippant to compare acts like Flock of Dimes to Kate Bush. Bush, in opening the door for female-fronted pop to revel in its own weirdness and creative bravery, inadvertently became the yardstick by which all future attempts at such auteurship would be measured. But there are undeniably shadows of her style on Head of Roses. Most of these shadows are revealed by Wesner’s luminous vocals; in her voice-as-instrument approach, and the ease with which she leaps huge intervals between notes. The weightless, unpredictable journeys of these vocal lines keep you in a constant state of expectation and vulnerability; stumbling blindly into every next moment.

Head of Roses feels like it is unravelling or writing itself as every moment of listening unfolds. It holds the same tension as when a band improvises. The idea that everything will suddenly fall apart is suspended like a ten-ton block above the stage. And the more precarious, the more on-the-brink a band can make everything feel, the more electrifying their improvisation will feel. Head of Roses dutifully delivers that same spontaneous energy to a world that’s starving for it, and is as close to a live experience many will have felt in a long time.   

Head of Roses is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Casper Clausen—Better Way

Better Way, which sees Efterklang alumnus Casper Clausen going solo for the first time, is an inoffensive collection of soft-edged indie jams which mimics its myriad influences with pride.

While it’s arguably redundant to say any post-2000 rock project has a Radiohead influence, similarities in this case are both too numerous and direct to ignore. Clausen’s soufflé-light voice is as versatile and lazily beautiful as Yorke’s—and sometimes finds itself subjected to identical delay effects. Instrumental elements regularly play parrot too. ‘Feel It Coming’ ascends into the same Warp-lite territory as the Radiohead of In Rainbows or The King of Limbs, patterned with irregular, krautrock-y percussion. Clausen’s style as a lyricist isn’t a million miles from Yorke, either. He favours imagistic or associative song subjects over a concrete narrative, and often repeats them like a chant, through which they accrue mystery and weight.

Clausen achieves moderate success with these techniques. He further elevates Better Way with some transformative production work, imaginatively incorporating some recognisable sounds. ‘Dark Heart’ features autotuned vocals which could be from a Poliça or a Travis Scott track, but places them so far in the background of its mix that they take on a fresh, whispery quality. These light touches—acousmatic drones under ‘8 Bit Human’, bubbling tape decay in ‘Little Words’—are the album’s best quality. In sheer lightness and musical understatement, Clausen has almost everybody in his genre beat. Better Way is as close as indie rock gets to ASMR.

Ultimately, the vocals are the kicker. Clausen’s voice has been compared to Bono—and by extension he sounds a little Chris Martin-y. The squeaky-clean male tenor isn’t as fashionable as it was fifteen years back, and may turn some listeners off completely. This is a shame, as Clausen is actually a very strong, tightly controlled vocalist. He brings the bashful Chris Martin of Parachutes Coldplay to mind; not the shouty-man of their new line of mum-pandering weepie anthems. Either way, he just ain’t Tom Waits.

This sounds facetious, but speaks to a larger problem. For something called Better Way, this album doesn’t strive to do much new. There is very little sense of danger. Not every album should reinvent the wheel, but most would benefit from bolder and more risky decisions. This is no exception; a little unsure of its own identity to get away with so fully incorporating others’ styles. Better Way is strongest at its most minimal—with standout tracks ‘Little Words’ and ‘Ocean Wave’ both built on quiet loops. This maybe reveals the album is at its best when it plagiarises least. Better Way is intricately crafted and compelling, but you may feel you’ve heard it a few times already.

Better Way is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Girl Friday—Androgynous Mary

Girl Friday are the sort of band who engender themselves to lazy comparison. The list is long and broad, encompassing both the gentility of acts like Cocteau Twins and the raggedness and lackadaisical vocal delivery of PJ Harvey. I can imagine Girl Friday’s Androgynous Mary described as derivative or unadventurous. These descriptors serve little purpose after over a century of recorded music; there is nothing new under the sun. Originality is how we Frankenstein our forebears’ disparate limbs together. Our expressions and individual voice live in the needlework—not in how well we disguise our musical literacy.

If anything, Girl Friday face the opposite problem here. Androgynous Mary bursts with loopiness and leftfield decisions. But these only become evident after casual listeners will have been turned off by some rote and insecure production. Girl Friday live far less in the shadow of dead and decrepit artists than they think. It feels invasive to suggest a band rejig their entire sound—but from a production standpoint, Androgynous Mary feels like an album which honours its influencers more than its own personnel.

Its sound does, conversely, grant Androgynous Mary a kind of unassuming anonymity, which it uses for ambushes. Listeners may pin ‘Eaten Alive’ down as pure post-punk pastiche, but it serpentines off-road for a Black Sabbath style sludge-fest outro. The clue is right there in the name of the LP’s first track; ‘This Is Not the Indie Rock I Signed Up For’. This technique lends destabilising vigour to Androgynous Mary—but it’s repeated so often throughout the album its coating rubs off a bit by the end.

Lyrics—much like the band’s name—are stark and matter-of-fact, compactly political and quietly humorous. Their precision and clear-headedness reflects Girl Friday’s very controlled approach. Androgynous Mary is both a restrained and unpredictable album. It portions out the metronomic plod of its post-punk ancestors with a side of wild and exciting freedom. It’s a very promising debut—and bodes well for a future in which an emboldened band can unleash their idiosyncrasy on the world.

Androgynous Mary is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

The Microphones—Microphones in 2020

For Microphones in 2020, Phil Elverum resurrects a long-dead nom de plume under which he recorded much of his most enduring and beloved work. Elverum has been a bold and restless artist throughout his decades-long career, which arguably came to a head with the passing of his partner Geneviève Castrée in 2016. In the wake of that loss, Elverum disparaged the mystic introspection that characterised his early work and turned to raw, brutal realism. A door had been opened, or closed, it seemed, forever.

The title of Microphones in 2020 is consciously absurd. If Elverum has outgrown soul-searching, why resurrect the project? And what place does it have in a year which has seen far greater focus on community action and the collective good than personal stability and mental health?

It’s a welcome surprise then, to find The Microphones’ sound almost unchanged from its past life 17 years ago. Very little has been ‘transformed’ or ‘modernised’; Elverum’s warm and melancholic guitar has the same old tone, his bass still buzzes and drums clip uncontrollably. The waves of distortion feel like an old friend. This plays into the lyrical content of the album rather neatly, as Elverum lists off production techniques, inspirations and aspirations of his early twenties. It’s a kind of straight-faced self-parody, almost like an experimental exercise; “can I return to this point in my life? Does it still exist?”

There’s a security that comes with age; an assured voice, confidence, balance, the ability to assert, relax, listen, make plans. Old Microphones feels like raw nerves kneaded by brass knuckles, born from the fire and confusion of troubled youth. In an edition of the podcast Song Exploder, focused on his track ‘I Want Wind To Blow’, you can almost hear Elverum’s cringing and wincing as he tries to reconcile his twenty-year-old voice with that of his late thirties. But perhaps that’s where Geneviève comes in, albeit indirectly. It’s only human to treat companions as vessels for your own stability, your own sense of self, to the point that when “the beast of uninvited change” visits, an entire life falls into disorder and must be radically reshuffled. Old doubts, fears, uncertainties and modes of expression wash back ashore, suddenly as acute as they felt all those years ago.

All this retrospection could’ve been arrogant, self-serving, self-mythologizing. You only have to look to Mark Kozelek’s recent work for that. But Microphones in 2020 is too wry and objective to fall into those traps. It explores how seriously we take ourselves when we’re young, how earnest and impassioned we can be, discussing how goofily endearing and valiant that outlook is. Elverum sings of him and his friends, “we’d go on the roof at night and actually contemplate the moon”. It’s a refreshing counterpoint to the popular notion that idealism and imagination die before you hit double figures. They’re visible in most of us long after that point and never die, lying dormant but rumbling, waiting to squeak out of the cracks.

Microphones in 2020 is just as confrontationally personal as 2016’s A Crow Looked At Me. It’s actually helped by its distance from Geneviève’s death, Elverum’s laser focus given permission to roam rather than firing again and again on the same open wound. There are moments of ecstatic beauty here which 2016 Elverum would not have allowed in his work. And a long-dormant sound is resurrected, every bit as fresh as it was all those years ago.

Microphones in 2020 is available for purchase and steaming here. Watch the audio/visual presentation below.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

powerpoint karaoke slideshow lyric demonstration music display photo flip audio book

Dehd—Flower of Devotion

In what has become their trademark, Dehd take a consciously no-frills approach with new album Flower of Devotion. The trio are courageous enough to shed window-dressings of cool and quirk to produce lean, focused music whose power resides in its simplicity. This doesn’t belie a lack of ambition—instead speaking to a rare confidence and conceptual rigour. It feels like before they even recorded a note, Dehd knew exactly how this album would sound.

In fact, they probably did. Flower of Devotion, more than any album in recent memory, sounds like it was recorded live. Anyone who’s listened to an album by Aussie psych band The Murlocs can attest to how great that can be. The timing couldn’t be better, as thousands lie in desperate drought of live experiences on measly hits of studio-recorded methadone.

And, like a gig, Flower of Devotion compresses and steals time. You’re propelled through the album like a bullet, barely touching the sides before you’re done. Songs rarely break the three-minute mark and repetition is used to pounding effect. Eric McGrady’s sloppy George-of-the-Jungle drums are so infectious I wouldn’t be surprised if they extend lockdown for a few months.

This sense of fun is what characterises Dehd against a wave of sadcore indie music. The genre overflows with songs about ones that got away, ones who never showed up in the first place; you get the idea. Dehd don't seem to interested in this, and aren’t so insufferably self-conscious to worry more about their categorisation than their content. It feels like they just love the sound of electric guitars, drums, and amplified voices, with a mentality which could easily transfer to ale-chugging party metal.

Like Hookworms (before their unfortunate career-ending controversy), or indie elder gods Black Kids, Dehd capture everything the genre has ever hoped to. They achieve the magic trick of simplicity that’s impossible to replicate or analyse. Flower of Devotion is never trite, never frivolous, but instantly makes the world feel like an easier place to be in.

It has a sound which is now nostalgic, carrying associations from before politics was a theatre of reactionaries, incendiary enough to split families; before the internet was awash with apathy and cynicism, and anything felt possible. The sun is shining brighter today than it has all year long. I’m not convinced Dehd didn’t summon it.

Flower of Devotion is available for purchase and streaming here. Do yourself a favour.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe