The Art of Shooting pull their generally shoegazy tendencies through filters of girly innocence and hard rock. The tracks on their first full-length album, Traveling Show (unsigned, due out April 2010) swoon and swirl with noisy guitars and an enveloping haze, but in that sea they’ve always got a handy life preserver tight around their waists. Their potentially contrasting styles make for compelling shifts in mood that work well, largely due to the strength of singer and main songwriter Kelly Irene Corson. She embodies the startling innocence of a young person who screams of empowerment but is shivering inside, all while employing layering techniques that add a sense of universality at the most crucial moments.

But mainly, Corson is a powerhouse, delivering yelps that recall the likes of Rainer Maria or Sleater-Kinney, and certainly embodying that energy. The wash of guitar noise accompanying her produces a softer effect than the aforementioned groups, a disorienting atmosphere rather than straight-up rebel rock. The percussion is straight and strong, driving the songs through their emotional highs and lows while finding room for flourishes even of the arena-rock kind. Though Corson is upfront, most especially because her already commanding vocals turn out to be quite personal lyrically, the other members Jim Archer, Julie Rozansky, and Gavin Dunaway are no mere background.

“It Goes (Home),” a nice survey of TAOS’s sound, begins with an adorable do-wop vocal line that soon becomes a gentle initial performance by Corson. As the track moves along, extra layers come in as other characters, adding emotions alternate to the one initially established. While the guitars buzz around angrily or clatter in an almost indistinguishable pattern, the combination of strength and confusion is driven home. The kicker, though, is when this all dissipates and some acoustic strums come in among the readoption of the opening vocal line — the roller coater takes charge without ever turning one’s stomach.

“No One Two” beings slow and teasing, as if it were going to be the ballad, though the guitars are too sinister for such a thing to actually occur. A prominent maraca shakes over a dreamscape that stews along intoxicatingly with a short and pleasing melody until it becomes clear that everything will explode. And it does so with an energy that suggests this band would be great to see live, all glittery jam with feedback galore and crashing drums. Corson reaches skyward for a couple of lines before settling back into the song’s initial lullaby. A mostly trustworthy narrator with a dark side not to be ignored, it’s unclear whether she should be pitied, trusted, or feared. But she should definitely be listened to.

The Andy Arnold Trio’s Eleven Windows may receive a relieved sigh from listeners as it starts in familiar, welcome territory. Arnold’s “Das Klavier” has a tone, compositional approach, and band improvisational style like Wayne Krantz’s trio, or Pat Metheny’s on “Bright Sized Life,” and the same vocal-less guitar, bass, drum instrumentation. Andy Arnold has a light, rounded tone and lyrical playing divulges to some guitar-shredding sections, accompanied by Magnus Skovdahl’s thin electric bass and Philippe Lemm’s thick drums. Skovdahl and Lemm occasionally improvise thematically with Arnold, but mostly stay strong with the groove behind his solo, allowing the intensity and contrast to build. The jagged, startling melody of “El Topo” travels through various guitar tones with prescribed intensities, and “Leaving Places” uses a layered melding of clarinets, oboe, and second guitar to melancholic effect.

Arnold’s bluesy style occasionally feels aimless, and the listener might be able to tell where certain takes are edited or combined. Sometimes soloing gets in the way of the music, because there is a change in focus from sounding good to playing impressively or beyond one’s ability. There is a different art to making what you are capable of doing right now sound great, or interesting, or unique. However, criticism of improvisational music should be taken with grains of salt, not because it is unwarranted or subjective, but because talented, soulful musicians are constantly changing, advancing, fluctuating, or faltering. 

Andy Arnold’s music is challenging and sounds hard, full of great melodies, difficulty, and ambitious timbre combinations. He negotiates his music well and with sonic vision, but still sometimes the listener is confused by overdubs, tone changes, dynamic stagnation, and the role that solos play in compositions. These are difficult problems about combining improvising and written material: the routine of hearing a melody, a few sections with guitar ripping and then a melodic repetition is usually effective, but that doesn’t mean that something else wouldn’t be more effective.

Everybody squeeze into your skin-tight acid washed jeans, tease up your hair as high as physically possible, strap on your studded bracelets, and hop into the Trans-Am. We’re about to get totally wasted and crash this mondo party on the Sunset Strip. That’s right dudes and dudettes, it’s time to Rock Hard or Die, and Joe Steel is providing the soundtrack. With the killer licks and shredding solos on this EP, there’s no better music to thrash to while chugging a sixer. The lyrics of the title track sum it up best: “Rock is our living, and living is fun/ If you’re not with us, then you better run, mother fucker.” These guys prove that you can be poetic to the max and badass at the same time. “California’s Burning” has a most bodacious chorus: “Burning to the ground/ Can’t you hear the sound?/ Rockers on the loose/ The sound of flaming youth.” Joe Steel totally speaks to the hearts of the misunderstood youth of the Reagan Generation. Sure, the other two songs on this EP are about strippers and hookers, but the innuendos are cleverly hidden in lyrics like “I play finger games/ I’ve got tongue tricks too.” Rock Hard or Die is not just an EP; it’s a motto, a way of life. Learn it, live it, love it. Totally.

Ghost Ghost recently took part in the RPM Challenge, a project where bands record an entire album in 28 days, "just because you can."  Ghost Ghost wrote and recorded an album in just two days, inspired by the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.  Check out their process here, or catch them live March 5th at Saints and Sinners in Hoboken.

Lili Roquelin grew up on southern coast of France and has been propelling herself forward since childhood. She dreamed of coming to the US to have a music career and so far that is exactly what she has done. In the past, she sang with the pop-rock band Phizzy Lager and collaborated on an album with Hate Dies Hard. 

Now on her own, it’s hard to imagine that the artist needs anyone else. Crisp with talent, Roquelin is more accomplished than most people of any profession can ever hope to be — her entire album is produced, written, composed, arranged, performed, recorded, and pre-mixed by Roquelin herself. She also does her own PR and marketing.  

In fact, the only help she’s seemed to have had is from her dedicated fanbase: Roquelin’s first release, LiLi Roquelin (2008), was completely fan-funded. The music video for the EP’s single, “I Saw You,” won the 2008 Best Music Video Queens International Film Festival and 2009 Best Pop Music Video Indie Gathering Film Festival. 

Now Roquelin’s released her first full-length album, Will You Hate the Rest of the World or Will You Renew Your Life? (2010). The first track, “Come and Hear My Story,” is a literal invitation that from any other artist would come off as heavy-handed. But Roquelin, with Sarah McLachlan-esque grace, makes it all sound more appealing.  

The sliding dissonance and dense composition that follows puts her music firmly in trip-hop, where it settles deep. Complex ballads with lingering themes of love and loss fill out the 9-track album, all sung with that undeniably endearing accent. “How We Grow” is a music box waltz and “Give you My Love” is a poignant call for the return of an old lover. Violins composed by Roquelin and performed by Laura Kay give this song the profound coating of old folk tradition. 

Everything Roquelin touches she makes her own — even things she hasn’t created. Her cover of “Sally’s Song” (written by Danny Elfman for the Tim Burton cult-classic, A Nightmare Before Christmas) is nothing short of perfect. Always a haunting show-stopper, translated into French it becomes a song of grand devastation.  

 “Renew,” from which the album’s title comes, is a bitter operetta. Arguably the darkest song on the album, the first light grows with a hum of “I’ve been wondering, should I write about this?”          

Whether or not she regrets it, we’re glad she did. Will You Hate the Rest of the World or Will You Renew Your Life? is now available for purchase. The new music video for “Should You Get Mad” (premiered February 15) can be seen on Lili Roquelin’s official website. 

Shilpa Ray’s voice is wretched, like a steaming mad old hag juiced up on something so grotesque and so awful she could peel the skin right off a grown man’s chest. Strictly off the recordings on A Fish Hook An Open Eye, she sounds like a creature out of an early Ray Bradbury novel, terrifying little children and old folks alike, a voice of a woman from your nightmares who has seen the worst of the worst and is out for some kind of horrifying justice. It’s beautiful. Makes a man uncomfortable.  

A Fish Hook An Open Eye is Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hooker’s debut album. While many critics throw the punk word around quite liberally, in the essence that bands scream a lot and make a lot of riff raff with reverb and gain and action, Shilpa Ray is providing us with a sample of some real from the streets primitivism, punk in it’s purist form. Her lyrics are lewd and in your face (“I just shit and I piss till ya/ put me to bed at night” off “Looking for Mr. Goodbar”), but somehow genuine, like your grandmother would listen a second longer, thinking it interesting, before shutting it off with rage. She spits and growls her lyrics, mostly out of key, like it’s not actually sung, but more snarled, conjuring wild images of werewolves scarfing down raw meat, like she’s trying to sing from the deepest, most wretched part of her stomach. Scientists haven’t yet discovered why music evokes such images.  Or perhaps they have, but either way, I would be afraid if I were alone in a room with Shilpa Ray.

Yet, amongst the darkness, there’s a hint of love in there. And that is where her music passes tolerable and becomes something to whisper to your friends. It’s present in her harpsichord type instrument called the harmonium. In contrast with the slide guitar, it sounds like something that might be featured in an Edgar Allen Poe motion picture: ominous but oozing with sorrow. The lyrics, when not lewd, discuss the horrors of the world, like on “What the Fuck was I Thinking?” Shilpa sings: “I fell in love and forgot about the homeless/ the hunger/ and the women on welfare… what the fuck was I thinking?” But beyond the lyrics and the music, it’s her voice, sounding somewhere between Nico and Patti Smith, that really gets the sorrow glands acting up. Her lyrics can sometimes seem cliché when read off the page: “Well I’m so messed up/ but I got nothing to prove it/ I got no awards or prizes/ for all my acting so desperately,” she sings on “Looking for Mr. Goodbar,” but when sung, it’s the fact that she appears to know what’s she’s singing that pulls you in. Like a black man singing the blues, even the most corporate whore-hound can tell genuine from spoiled brat. In Brooklyn, there’s a million little girls who think they can sing, and we take it, we sit there and applaud when they finish because we’re a supportive community. I can appreciate that. But we’re all thinking, “Man, I really hope someone kicks that mike chord out on accident.” Or even worse, we’re all standing frozen in fear, hoping the band doesn’t make any mistakes. Shilpa is genuine, there’s no one way to say it.

My criticism is that the audience she's trying to find might be somewhat small. It takes some gall to listen to her music. Her fans most likely consist of a handful of Bukowski die-hards, angry feminists, people who enjoy dark places, and that rare breed of people who like to get fucked up and really weird. It’s shocking music, not for softhearted, folk loving indie fans, which, with much chagrin from us punk lovers, is what’s hip these days. But there could be a niche for her as the indie crowd and the teeny-bopper crowd inevitably grow weary of soft-heartedness and commercialism. Perhaps similar to how Patti Smith converted a few over at CBGBs when she served up a jolt of primitivism during the dazed disco days, Shilpa will suck in some folk who are growing weary of happiness and longing. The vibrations I’m getting makes me believe Ray doesn’t care who’s listening.

“Woman Sets Boyfriend on Fire” might be the best on the album in terms of having a genuine Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers feel. All the songs have a similar whiskey soaked, dark, rawness, but the album has much diversity, going between fast and punk like, to the more sorrowful ballads. “I’m not Rigid… Yet” is another great one with an Irish punk feel and a booming, walking bass line. All the songs work on this album and the band does its job of supporting the lead and not adding any clutter, but it’s all Shilpa Ray who makes A Fish Hook An Open Eye a unique and memorable experience.

Dinowalrus is the “where the hell did this come from?” experimental rock trio that will perplex with a mix of live and programmed instruments. There is alien synth whirring, repeated keyboard patterns over tumbling tom and kick-heavy drumming, punchy electric bass grooving steadily, wall-of-distortion guitars, seemingly atonal vocals, and the confusion of unexpected reprisals, rhythms, and the occasional robotic voice. They are a noise band that you can rock out to while simultaneously thinking “is that a squeaking saxophone, or a reverb-heavy guitar?” The blend of sounds is unique, but never unbelievable.

What at its core may have been a new age meditation CD is tarnished brazenly by conflicting tempos, distorted shrieks, and an array of percussive clicks and clacks. Continuous is the synth setup that brings a sci-fi tone to an otherwise vaguely punk/rock/noise effort, a weirdo blending of vibes that are rarely heard combined or even near each other. There’s also an aroma of surf rock (from the guitar tones and cavernous drums), rockabilly, and a beyond Animal Collective sense of unexpectedly changing tempo, and an ear for what works.

The vocals are mostly ugly, echoey shouting, with frequently undecipherable lyrics, and the ones that can be heard seem nonsensical, although all this simply adds to their aura of mystery. The bizarrely soothing tone is sustained, as on the hushed, beautiful layers of singing-mumbling on “Haze on the Mobius Strip,” a song which leaves earth behind about halfway through, before embarking on an epic course through psychedelic and mature rocking. The song “CMYK” is an amazingly  catchy track, despite its unpredictability, and the disgusting singing is left behind, for a sinister spoken-word and sustained note vocals.

% is a highly recommended album, as the strength of its character will draw you into its quirky tale. What you might have first thought was too ferocious, mysterious, or absurd, becomes just right as each spacey note convinces of its own outlandish belonging.

In One Wind might rightly be called a folk band, but its six members take that categorization as a light framework and introduce to it numerous additional stylistic influences, including jazz, experimental, and pop. Most of the songs on their self-titled debut EP start off as quiet guitar scratchingsand pleasingly soft male vocals, and while some remain in that realm, others dip suddenly into odd rhythms or haunting drum solos. Folk, though, is certainly their guidepost sound and for that they can be compared to Iron & Wine, though their larger size quickly lifts that comparison away from the bedroom tapes and more into the weightier accompaniment of Sam Beam’s later output.

Another band that comes to mind is the Dirty Projectors, because not only does IOW make unexpected rhythmic leaps that feel like controlled tripping, but they make excellent use of female vocal harmonies. Guitarist/Vocalist  Angelo Spagnolo sings with a soft, silky croon that recalls the Bowerbirds’ Phil Moore, while Mallory Glaser and Lily Claire Nussbaum jump in intermittently with old-timey-radio style flair. Add to that Max Jaffe’s subtle, jazzy drums, Robert Lundberg’s dark and sneaky upright bass, and Steven Lugerner’s mastery of the woodwinds, and the band’s eclecticism speaks for itself.

Opener “Two Fine Pressed Suits” begins as a gentle campfire guitar piece, Spagnolo singing in a silky heartbreaker tone before some breathy harmonies ease into the mix. A bit of tongue-dampened clarinet adds a fuzzy weightiness and suggests a fuller sound to come. The track gets noisier and noisier as it progresses, the other band members adding their talents in a subtle yet undeniable way, giving it some heft even as it holds onto its original mood. “Moving” accomplishes something else entirely with a driving train tempo full of random crashes and unexpected rhythm changes. The chorus is one such moment, and delivers a nice dose of pop that makes it something to look forward to. These two songs illustrate the appeal of IOW: they take the comforting, soul-scratching beauty of singer/songwriter guitar folk and combine it with experimental rhythms and randomness that will entice the easily bored.

Despite my initial reaction to a cheesy album title, Nick Kadajski’s 5 Point Perspective’s Remembering Things To Come reveals a unique jazz with a sharp edge, and an interesting melee of guitars, alto, bass, and drums. They are skilled technicians, no doubt, and with enough maturity to mix their sounds wonderfully. The personality interplay of guitarists Ben Cassoria and Sean Moran illustrate a delicate relationship. Brad Maestas’s elegant bass playing communes directly with drummer Brian Adler and subtly with Kadajski’s alto. Basically they sound like a band, like they’re improvising from a familiar, comfortable, truthful space.

The compositions are idiosyncratic, but they have a tendency to depart so far from the opening melody that it’s hard to tell (or remember) what the hell song is actually about. Kadajski took the album name to heart and wrote melodies that are appealing while they last, but are quickly left behind for the next, completely different section. This is the case on “Musings On Beethoven,” which starts off as a dirge-like 2^nd movement, but is suddenly abandoned a minute in for a percussion onslaught, and then a jam-band re-ignition out of nowhere. What happened to Beethoven?  He is revived suddenly and angrily at the end.

The album does display some beautiful variance, as on the almost drum-less, melodic poem “Gently,” the weirdly straightforward samba of “Lessons Learned,” the demonstration of different tones on guitar trading in “Sameitude.” The ballad “The Ness of Kate” (‘Ness’ as in lake?  I’m not sure…) has a Hendrix and Metheny quality, although subdued and gradual.  

And perhaps the title’s not so cheesy after all, as Nick Kadajski’s brother claims in the laudatory liner notes, citing from Ralph Ellison: “… the end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.” That sounds pretty deep, but it also sounds like a strong emphasis on the future and moving from isolated section to section. All in all, Nick Kadajski’s first album sounds great, although occasionally artificial.

So, this is that screamo stuff the kids are listening to? Nobody knows what screamo really is (let alone the distinct differences between first and second wave), but if the defining characteristics are emotional music with lots of screaming, then Baltimore-based Piano Becomes the Teeth is a prime example. Of course, this would also put bands as diverse as Thursday and The Dillinger Escape Plan in the same category. Piano Becomes the Teeth lies somewhere in between the two. 

Old Pride could be the new Glassjaw album… almost. After the brief but misleading mellow intro of the opening track, “Filial,” it’s nothing but multi-layered guitars, abruptly changing tempos, and searing vocals soaked in agony. Sonically, it is very intense. Diehard fans of bands with such elements are bound to love Old Pride, because it never, ever strays from the formula. “Cripples Can‘t Shiver” has small, soft moments that attempt to temporarily turn down the intense-o-meter, but they are just creating contrast between heavy, screaming parts. It is also quite apparent that vocalist Kyle (the band members’ last names are written down somewhere next to the real definition of screamo) has only one tone of voice. At least it’s one that will get people’s attention. When this guy has a potty emergency, people make way for him. 

Piano Becomes the Teeth have delivered an album that is powerful in its performance but dares not take two steps off a narrow path. Seven tracks virtually indistinguishable from each other; twenty-eight minutes of overly intense stories being blasted at the listener from both the human voice and musical instruments. Old Pride is like a soap opera: even though the drama is way over the top, some people are still bound to get hooked on it.