Chicago-based Castevet is a band that mixes the sincerity of indie with the abrasiveness of punk. And while many bands in the current NYC scene attempt a similar combination, this is a totally different sound. It’s hard to say if this is the result of the Midwest scene or a specific result of Castevet’s personal style, but it’s almost a more sophisticated brand of indie/punk hybrid. At least, the music is distinguished. The vocals, on the other hand: good luck deciphering them. It sounds like Cedric from The Mars Volta is on Valium and pretty pissed off about being in slow motion. When the music’s hitting hard, it fits. But the band has a tendency to alternate tempos, and the half-hearted guttural vocals are sometimes awkwardly out of place. That point aside, Castevet is a tight band displaying creative musicianship and a deep understanding of both their instruments and their chosen genres. The dancing guitar riffs of songs like “(Get) Bucktown” and “Six Parts Summer” compliment the intricate drum parts perfectly. Their song “Midwest Values” is bisected by an awesome melodic breakdown and contains an emotionally striking outro; the rest of the song (all of the parts containing vocals) comes off as quite mediocre, pulling the listener towards the conclusion that Castevet would probably work better as an instrumental band.

Much like their song title “Sleeping Lions,” the music of Annabel is beautiful until it gets stirred up, and then things can get a little intense. Hailing from Kent, Ohio, Annabel is a unique flavor of indie music that is both sweet and salty. Seemingly innocent pop melodies half-buried under art house rock, all pleasantly drowning in an ethereal pool of emo, devoid of the latter’s best known clichés. The band rocks, but does it oh so softly. Even when the tempo is pretty fast, as in “People and Places,” and distortion saturates most of the track, the mood is somehow light and airy. The occasional usage of subtle keyboards, like the bell melody in the aforementioned “Sleeping Lions,” only adds to the jovial personality of their music. Then again, titles like “Widow Party” may raise suspicions that there is something deeper happening in these songs, perhaps something a little morbid. It’s very possible, but with such unique recipes one can merely speculate about the possible top secret ingredients. What can be said with certainty is that Annabel combines complexity with catchiness, which makes for some creative compositions. They are scheduled to play the SXSW festival this year, and it is likely that they will turn many heads.

With a shit ton of Allston bands murkily impersonating some variation of Sonic Youth and/or Crystal Castles, Rodeo Church are rather audacious in their embrace of cheerful indie pop music.  Take the opening track of Rodeo Church EP (2010 - Haunted Casino Media), "Miserable;" it is at least titularly misleading. This is an upbeat track both danceable and pleasant. It opens with Jeremy Lee Given's chirpy stippling of synthesizers that recall a less annoying Passion Pit. The chorus melodically swoons upwards but the lyrics are smart and worldly enough that the whole affair doesn't become too cloying: "I know where I am/every day's the same/wake up in the morning/miserable again." "Miserable" is kind of like a sonic speed ball, the "stimulant" being the neatly arranged instrumentation and beaming sing-along chorus, the "depressant" analogous to the post-adolescent malaise touched upon in the lyrics.

The second track, "Laughing Panther/Post-Party Disaster," indubitably stands out with its insidious and creepy bass lines. Adding the bass as a focal point and piling on a distorted, dissonant guitar may not be a new trick but it works on this song. Oddly dank and psychedelic, "Laughing Panther" recalls a more palatable retread of the Seeds: shimmy-inducing sixties garage rock swagger cured with enough deft pop sensibility. Vocalist Adam Young slings some verbal quips that are custommade for the song's femme fatale party protagonist. With lines like, "Run your little mouth like a blow torch" and "put a Band-Aid on my bleeding heart," the sinuous lyrics swirl into the music like libidinous hip swivels the song obviously begets.

The steeze of the EP shifts, however, with track three, "The People That Brought Us Up." The title could easily refer to the New York band the Strokes, as it is most evident here that Rodeo Church are highly influenced by them. The song opens with shuffling drum machine scrambles, slightly gravelly vocals and guitars filtered within an inch of their lives. It's hard to tell if Rodeo Church are indulging in such borrowed familiarity for the purposes of exaltation or emulation. Compared to the aforementioned Sonic Castles/Crystal Youth retreads of Allston, it's paradoxically refreshing to hear a band that sounds like the Strokes, especially with the anticipation of March 2011's release Angles.

Still, the tempo of "People" stays consistently danceable (similar to the boob-bouncing beats of, you guessed it, the Strokes), cohesively listenable. The lyrics are still brilliant; pangs of Allstonian melancholy are apparent in lyrics describing a "sad, decaying city," formerly with "streets once paved with gold" that have turned to "rust and shit and traces of people who probably sold their souls." Juxtaposed with artist Lucifer Alvini's surreal cover art, Rodeo Church's songs are justifiably upbeat; they survived Allston and survive it every day.

Listening to the EP becomes trying as "Desperate Is Not a Sexual Preference" does not get more interesting than its clever title. It is a decidedly more muted song, serving more of a transitional filling purpose than the smart, danceable tracks Rodeo Church does so well.

However, emulating another band so closely, even a well-loved one like the Strokes, could spell future troubles for Rodeo Church. Slack ultimately has to be given because these guys have the chops and enthusiasm and are still figuring out their sound. While the unabashed indie pop is a brave act, the guys of Rodeo Church could do themselves well by tapping into unharnessed originality. With their obvious chops and spirited playing, sounds of Rodeo Church will have any dance floor alive and any room on fire.

Atlanta band Blame Game bursts with an intensity that belongs in the 90s metal category, since they bring nothing of the bright synth-driven optimism that characterizes new indie music. No, Blame Game is all cowboys with guitar straps, as the quartet pummels through mathy oddities with hardcore surf timbre, while remaining loose, rolling, and defiant. They are guitar leaders, the bass falling into step as a haunting undercurrent, the support below the rippling current of tense strings. They are thankfully not show-offs, concerned instead with the tight blend of wavering guitars as they blur into each other. 

Each track is unpredictable, sounding less as songs than as movements in classical pieces, and willing to depart from the Slint-style dynamics that were effective twenty years ago for an aurally expansive approach. For example, an overblown saxophone adds sharpness to attenuated guitars on “Slidin’ Highway.” The song’s distant drums feel as if recorded in a basement or garage, with only enough space to keep the instruments from running together in some non-cohesive wash, even in the midst of cathartic feedback at the end. Vocals sometimes rear their head. The climax of “Slidin’ Highway” erupts with a majestic, massive young male’s voice, as if sung from another dimension frighteningly similar to our own.

“Lemon Drops” is particularly Don Caballero-esque, oozing with post-rock mystery and indecisive melancholy. The song floats about menacingly, and the epic “Clear Change” jangles its loping melodies. It walks the line between clear melodies, beautiful and uncommon, and ambling imprecision that is tenderly human amidst lonely and intense circumstances.

Boston’s The Grownup Noise has a band name that is anything but ironic.  What?!  A new indie band without a hint of detached, ironic witticism?!  Settle down, hipsters, it’s true.  The Grownup Noise make music that sounds like… well, grownup noise.  With their EP, Shall We? (2010- self released) the four-piece craft mature, albeit writhing, pop music with rollicking acoustic guitars, pounded piano chords and a cello.  That’s right, grownups play cello.

Okay, so maybe The Grownup Noise is somewhat of an ironic title for a band that clearly takes pop craftsmanship seriously.  Shall We? delivers its fair share of melody by way of adult contemporary catchiness.  There’s no “noise” to be found here, really, as noise would imply dissonance of some kind.  The cellist never plays using a beer bottle, no distorted pan flute solos, no acoustic experimentation reminiscent of Gastr del Sol or Mice Parade.  Maybe a more fitting band name would be Give This Album To Your Parents. 

However, the “noise” that The Grownup Noise seem to be referring to is that of emotional heftiness displayed through the intense interplay of piano and guitar, as well as opaque, vaguely urgent lovelorn lyrics involving “trains arriving” and “taking pills of despair.”  Believe it or not, this is when The Grownup Noise are at their best.  With singer-guitarist Paul Hansen sounding like James Taylor if he was one of the 500 members of Broken Social Scene, songs like “The Artist Type” and “Outside” elicit beauty out of otherwise trite material - the former with its hypercatchy melancholy (and a dead-ringer for Stars circa Set Yourself On Fire), the latter with its acoustic harmonics and palm-muting restraint smothered in looming intensity that never quite bubbles over.

Shall We? falters when the songs slow down, trading in urgency for wistful ruminations heavy on lilting cello parts.  This ranges from “So It Goes,” a largely boring number that only gets interesting when Hansen shuts up for the coda’s swelling organ flourishes, to “Strawmen,” whose potential is overwhelmed by the song’s generic pop formula, to “Six Foot Solemn Oath,” nothing more than puke-pants, cry-baby garbage that seems overly impressed with its cute boy-girl vocals and seventh grade poetry (“Hear the sound of the snow,” what?!).

The Grownup Noise are not trying to be fashionable Brooklynite provocateurs.  Which is fine - Lord knows there’s enough of those little bastards running around, wearing acid-wash cut offs and paint-splattered boat shoes.  However, to compare their sound to the “blind intensity” of The Velvet Underground (as they do under the bio section on their website) is a crock of shit.  This is indie adult contemporary.  A hit single or two mixed in with filler, sounding pretty for pretty’s sake.    

For those hardcore hip-hop fans, the name Whitetrash Shaolin may be a little off-putting. But they do say, never judge a band by their name.

Actually, no one says that, but if they did it would certainly apply here. Whitetrash Shaolin is like Zen Buddhism meets the Pharcyde. The message?  Reach a higher state of being and observe what’s going on  with your sixth sense, your third eye. You’ll see clearer – especially if you use Whitetrash Shaolin as Visine.

Whitetrash Shaolin beckons back to the hip-hop of yore, where samples were used simply as accent points and where songs were actually used to convey important points. With lyrics like “What if your enlightenment depended on the whole fucking world, everything has the potential to awaken, so through your own skillful means, be a whisky drinkin’, tantric schemin’, lucid dreamin’ settle into the natural state of being,” WTS certainly isn’t just another rap group.

Originating from the seemingly endless assembly line of underground bands hailing from Texas, Houston’s own Young Mammals recreate ‘60s garage pop with an ear for stadium-sized (okay, maybe amphitheater-sized) sing-a-longs.  Their official debut, Carrots (2010-self released), offers 11 organically grainy tunes instilled with Volkswagen-commercial catchiness.  In with the Young Mammals, out with the old Arcade Fire.

Okay, so there’s nothing particularly new about Carrots’ Beatles-by-way-of-Dr. Dog sound.  However, what sets it apart from other lackluster albums brought to you by similar young vintage souls is not only the songs’ inherent catchiness but the album’s overall cohesive nature.  While Carrots is chock-a-block with shambolic pop anthems like the Arcade Fire-influenced “Stay to the Left” and the sunny “Dragon Wagon,” the Young Mammals aren’t afraid to veer from the melodic chant-rock that, more or less, defines the album.

Tracks like the instrumental interlude “Weather Bee” (complete with a sad sack Huckleberry Hound horn section) and the faint ambient room noise of the off-kilter closer “Untitled” immediately differentiates the Young Mammals from the Springsteen-butt-sniffing bar bands who won’t put out an album until every song resembles an over-inflated anthem about an alcoholic garbage man who writes poetry on cocktail napkins.  Even more impressive are the slower numbers, such as “8 4 8,” a song who’s chorus croons about Jesus and some cholo named Nestor, and the circus-on-the-beach whimsy of “The Man in the Cannon.”

These variations from song to song - whether they charge with megaphone shout singing, meander with gorgeously slowburning chords or just simply make a clatter of noise - give Carrots a well-textured sound that escapes blandness by never staying in similar territory for too long.  However, what ties the album together is the melodic sensibility that every track hints at (some louder than others), as well as the warm production that leaves a vinyl-crackle over every song.

The penultimate track, “Duck,” is a stand-out amongst stand-outs that best exemplifies the separate but equal qualities that make Carrots work so well.  Starting with a humble melody, it builds on a chorus of “Oooos” and “Ahhhhs” until it reaches its eardrum rattling coda, finding these Young Mammals locking in rhythmically to a cloud of noise that leads perfectly into the blown-out ear whistling of “Untitled.”  The age of the LP may be dead but the Young Mammals sure as shit ain’t.           

Having just released his second album of solo work since the end of former band Del Amitri, Justin Currie has taken up a spot in the adult contemporary genre. He pens and delivers easily swallowed, mildly twangy pop-rock with a world-weary outlook and throaty rasp. He might be wizened by experience, or just entirely bitter, but lyrically the songs take a step above their standard pop structures. Even his bio is a mouthful, with a claim to “cramming too many words into odd amounts of bars,” as evidenced notably in “No, Surrender.” A repetitive rant, the song establishes a nice ear to production technique and mood, though the words sound more like a speech with not enough attention to poetic flow. “In My Heart, The War Goes On” edges toward alt-country with an upbeat tone, eventually slipping into a very Wallflowers sound, which is quite the throwback. The guitar work and well-placed harmonies are nice, even though the song itself gets cheesy rather than sustaining its initial promise. Currie’s other songs benefit from attention to production and detail but are a bit weighed down by an air of melancholy that somehow makes the tracks feel languid even when they’re rockin’. The above descriptions taken in whole amount to an odd overall product, in that thoughtful considerations and intriguing characteristics become only so-so songs. Fans of Currie, though, are likely to enjoy this new home that he’s found.

Combining elements of rock, jazz, and classical into a parable that reads more like a musical than a concept album, Parachute Musical’s Everything Is Working Out Fine In Some Town (2008) tells a tale of the past four years in the life of principle songwriter/vocalist/pianist Josh Foster, who traveled the country to escape several fractured relationships with family members and a fiancé.  The reason Everything Is Working Out works on so many levels is because of how relatable it all seems, from the feeling of disillusionment presented in “College Degree” to the nostalgia of “Flashback ’83.”

Fortunately, Musical manages to maintain an upbeat mood throughout, even while dealing with such weighty subject matter – something that is reflected in the blind optimism of the title, or seen in the standout tracks “Leave Me” and “One More Song.”  One can’t help but feel as though Foster and company have hope there must be some kind of American utopia out there everyone longs to escape to, which, despite the fact a lot of their lyrics present a defeatist outlook, Musical never seem to lose sight of.

It will be a lot of fun to see how this band matures, though it seems like it will take a true classic and a lot of alignment of the planets for them to better such an offering as this.  But Everything Is Working Out Fine In Some Town is a wholly enjoyable experience regardless, making Parachute Musical a group to be on the look out for.

Vancouver’s Japandroids didn’t play to as many people as the Dave Matthews Band or Jay-Z at Bonnaroo but their set was just as epic.  They certainly rocked harder than those aforementioned artists, which should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the band. Singer/guitarist Brian King promised from the beginning that even though the heat was clearly getting to him and singer/drummer David Prowse, they were going to play as many songs as possible, even if it killed them.

Fortunately for mankind, the Japandroids didn’t die, and they still delivered one of the weekend’s strongest performances.  Performing at the rather casual timeslot of 12:30 on Sunday afternoon, King expressed his surprise that more than five people had turned out to see them.  In fact, there were several hundred people there, most of them consciously.  It didn’t seem necessary to inform the crowd of the words to “Crazy/Forever” – though King did anyway – as most bellowed the lyrics right along with him. 

King and Prowse came to the stage without a set list in mind, opting instead to make it up as they went along, which added to the informal nature of the show.  It also gave them the opportunity to cram as many songs into their brief set as possible; a logical path given how brutal the heat was becoming.  Songs from last year’s Post-Nothing (2009) were heavily featured, including crowd-pleasers such as “Rockers East Vancouver,” “Wet Hair,” and “Sovereignty,” as well as a raucous rendition of “Darkness on the Edge of Gastown” from No Singles (2010). 

In closing with “Young Hearts Spark Fire,” it was evident that though the merciless heat was particularly merciless to the two Canadians, King and Prowse were overwhelmed with the support they had received from the crowd, some of which showed up three hours in advance to see them play.  Luckily for everyone who turned out, the Japandroids braved the elements and an unfortunate timeslot and gave the kind of performance that would have been worthy of the entire Bonnaroo admission.

The xx - That Tent
By: John Mabery
Rating: 10/11

When attending a festival the magnitude of Bonnaroo, one hopes that the first performance they catch will set the tone for the weekend to come.  For this reviewer, The xx put on the kind of show that set the bar so high that, over the course of the next three days, few bands were able to top them.  With several thousand nestled into That Tent, the anticipation was at a fever pitch; it was hard to imagine anyone leaving disappointed.   

As has always been the case with Bonnaroo, the late night shows are the best platform for an up-and-coming band to make their name.  The xx – more or less in the Thursday headliner spot – took the stage promptly at 11:30.  The lights faded as the band launched into the darkly brilliant “Intro” to set the tone, the audience clapping along.  The crowd was definitely behind the London-based trio for the entire set, erupting into cheers when the guys kicked off “VCR” and into dance during the final tense moments of “Night Time,” which concluded with bassist Oliver Sim pounding away on a couple of symbols with a pair of mallets.   

Beat maker Jamie Smith’s pulsating rhythms underscored the interplay between guitarist Romy Madley Croft and Sim, who did more than share vocal duties.  The pair remained locked in a seemingly private dialogue throughout the set, paying little mind to the entranced audience at their feet.  Croft and Sim offered the same kind of beautiful, hushed vocals as heard on the album.  It became increasingly evident as the set wound down that this has as much to do with their humility as it does with their brilliantly crafted sound.    

It was half past midnight when The xx finished their set, the kind of set that rejuvenated an exhausted crowd, the kind that one wished could last into the wee hours of the morning. Despite the fact it couldn’t, this was the kind of performance bound to create a lasting memory that will go down in Bonnaroo lore, certainly one that the weary Thursday night crowd will not soon forget.