{"id":854,"date":"2012-08-17T05:30:59","date_gmt":"2012-08-17T10:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=854"},"modified":"2012-08-17T05:30:59","modified_gmt":"2012-08-17T10:30:59","slug":"hundred-word-reviews-august-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2012\/08\/17\/hundred-word-reviews-august-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Hundred-word Reviews: August 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\">Here\u2019s another installment in my occasional series of capsule reviews, generally covering indie releases. My self-imposed limit for this particular exercise is 100 words on each album.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/niels_nielsen.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"280\" height=\"280\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"10\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Niels Nielsen \u2013 <em>Welcome to the Promising Land of Hi5ers and Hopeless People<\/em><\/strong><br \/>\nSaint Marie Records is home to a number of indie-pop acts; for some reason many of them seem to be duos. <strong>Niels Nielsen<\/strong> is an exception. On <em>Welcome to the Promising Land of Hi5ers and Hopeless People<\/em> he crafts pop sounds with clattering drum programs, edgily distorted guitars, swooping synthesizers and treated vocals. There&#8217;s a dreamy, organic feel to the songs, though they&#8217;re built on a mostly electronic foundation. Nielsen has a good ear for melody, and his production style balances homespun feel with a precise approach. Odds are that Nielsen sounds exactly the same onstage as he does here.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/fallon_cush_april.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"280\" height=\"280\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"10\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Fallon Cush \u2013 <em>April<\/em><\/strong><br \/>\nI covered <strong>Fallon Cush<\/strong>&#8216;s <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=656\">debut<\/a> in November 2011; on the group\u2019s sophomore release April, the turn in more winning melodies, and (in places, as on \u201cIt&#8217;s a Line\u201d) they rock out a bit more. Here they sound a bit less like <strong>Crowded House<\/strong>. A quiet, folky approach wedded to an unerring melodic sensibility means that<em> April <\/em>is enjoyable through and through. There&#8217;s no funny business here: straightforward, song-based arrangement and production, and <strong>Steve Smith<\/strong>&#8216;s vocals out front where they belong. Think of <em>April<\/em> as Australian Americana that leans in a pleasingly pop direction; there&#8217;s not a weak track here.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/paul_cusick_pdice.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"280\" height=\"280\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"10\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Paul Cusick \u2013 <em>P&#8217;dice<\/em><\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Paul Cusick<\/strong>&#8216;s exciting <em>P&#8217;dice<\/em> is a collection of prog-leaning songs that swing and swagger. Its ten tracks form a conceptual entity of a sort, but one can simply enjoy the propulsive songs, full of melodrama (the good kind) and emotion. <em>P&#8217;dice<\/em> might just be the most mainstream (again, in its best sense) release to feature the boundary-pushing drum work of <strong>Marco Minnemann<\/strong> and <strong>Gavin Harrison<\/strong> (<strong>Porcupine Tree<\/strong>). But it&#8217;s Cusick&#8217;s vocals and instrumentation (he plays guitar, bass and keyboards) that keeps <em>P&#8217;dice<\/em> moving forward. In places, \u201cGod, Paper, Scissors\u201d is vaguely reminiscent of <strong>King Crimson<\/strong>&#8216;s \u201cThe Sheltering Sky.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/stratospheerius_next_world.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"280\" height=\"250\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"10\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Stratospheerius \u2013 <em>The Next World&#8230;<\/em><\/strong><br \/>\nNormally, I&#8217;m put off by jam bands. Their self-gratifying noodling and goofily hippie sensibility don&#8217;t do anything for me. Nominally a jam band, <strong>Stratospheerius<\/strong> is a much more song-based act. With vague hints of <strong> Dixie Dregs<\/strong> (it must be the thrilling, intelligent use of violin) and a subtle jazzy feel, Stratospheerius&#8217; <em>The Next World&#8230;<\/em> draws from a lot of places for their sound. But the clear vocals and economical arrangements carry the day. Stratospheerius often sounds like more than four players, and my sense is that&#8217;s due more to their prowess and musical simpatico than any amount of studio overdubbage.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/tab_benoit_legacy.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"280\" height=\"280\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"10\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Tab Benoit \u2013 <em>Legacy: The Best of Tab Benoit<\/em><\/strong><br \/>\nElectrified, countrified, bluesified: those words give some small sense of <strong>Tab Benoit<\/strong>&#8216;s musical approach. Imagine if <strong>John Fogerty<\/strong> was more into the blues and actually from the south, and you&#8217;ll get an idea of Tab Benoit&#8217;s sound. He can rock as hard as <strong>ZZ Top<\/strong> (witness \u201cNight Train\u201d), but his blues feels a lot more authentic (and features none of those silly synthesizers). Benoit is one of a very short list of players (see also: <strong>Junior Brown<\/strong>) who appeal to country and rock fans. The rhythm section gives his songs danceability, and his blazing guitar runs keep things sizzling.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0in;\" align=\"center\"><a class=\"body\" href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/the_musoscribe\">Follow \u201cthe_musoscribe\u201d on <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/icon_twitter_small.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"18\" height=\"18\" border=\"0\" hspace=\"1\" vspace=\"0\" \/> Twitter<\/a> and get notified<br \/>\nwhen new features, reviews and essays are published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s another installment in my occasional series of capsule reviews, generally covering indie releases. My self-imposed limit for this particular exercise is 100 words on each album. Niels Nielsen \u2013 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}