The Sadies ::: Photo Courtesy of Yep Roc Records

The Sadies are the flagship band of the Toronto alt-country scene, a hardworking foursome with twelve years, thirteen albums, and numerous high profile collaborations under their tooled-leather belts. Exclaim calls them “a national treasure,” and every other Canadian band I hear interviewed has toured with them, is about to tour with them, or would like to tour with them. All of this might explain why their relatively unexceptional new album, Darker Circles, is on the Polaris Prize short list: perhaps the jury simply feels that it’s The Sadies’ time.

Now, Darker Circles isn’t a bad album. It could reasonably be described as “solid” all the way through, and a couple of tracks - the ghostly, reverberating “The Quiet One” and the epic lyrical poem “Violet and Jeffrey Lee” - are markedly lovely. For the most part, though, the fare is standard noir country, mournful lyrics of fear and regret laid atop classic country instrumental stylings and darkened up with a touch of moody psychedelia. It’s a style that quite a few bands are working in right now, and though The Sadies put forth a notably honed and polished version of it, Darker Circles doesn’t seem to offer any musical breakthroughs or point to any new directions for the genre.

My most noticeable impression of Darker Circles, in fact, was that after a dozen listens I had barely any impression at all. Had you asked me what I thought of it, you would have received a vague “It’s nice” in reply. “Very country,” I might have expanded. “Kind of dark.” Specific details of the album still elude my recall; my memories consist mostly of snippets of melody and hazy mental images.

The Polaris Prize is awarded for “creative artistic achievement in recorded music.” I hope to see a truly groundbreaking album take home the prize, something challenging and exciting like last year’s winner The Chemistry of Modern Life. Darker Circles may deserve a place in the dedicated alt-country fan’s catalog, but I can’t honestly believe that it’s going to change any lives or radically alter the future of Canadian music. Look elsewhere for the 2010 honoree.

Dan Mangan ::: Photo Courtesy of Jonathan Taggart

It took me one minute and thirty-three seconds to fall in love with Dan Mangan.

“Road Regrets,” the first song on Mangan’s latest album, Nice, Nice, Very Nice, begins gently, with a few soft tones. Things build gradually from there: the muffled strumming of an acoustic guitar, a few electric notes, a bass. Finally, after ove a minute, drums. A crescendo builds, the energy grows, the song is about to explode — but then it doesn’t. Mangan takes us high and then drops us low, pulling most of the instruments out from under us, and we find ourselves in seven seconds of tranquil vocal free-fall. “It’s a cryyyyyiiiiiiing shame,” he croons. “Them’s the breaks –” but after this taunt, the drums kick back in, and we are carried back up and onwards.

The great pop climax does come, but only near the very end of the song, and only after another rise-drop-repeat cycle. It’s this capacity for unexpectedness within the well-trodden framework of folk-pop that first endeared Dan Mangan to me. The quality is demonstrated regularly on Nice: the earnest vocals of “The Indie Queens Are Waiting” belie the song’s slyly observed, Wharton-esque lyrics; “Basket” begins with sad resignation but shifts suddenly into shouts of defiance — only to collapse heartbroken at the end.

Surprises, though, can only surprise you so many times, so it’s lucky for Mangan that there’s more to him than musical plot twists. Nice’s title is taken from a Kurt Vonnegut work, and appropriately Mangan is quite a literary songwriter. Each song is populated by distinct characters: the irresolutely aging man in “Basket,” the frantic, strung-out scenester of “Tina’s Glorious Comeback.” In “You Silly Git,” the character may or may not be Mangan, declaring “The songs I sing are all about myself.”

Also featured on Nice is a track that has probably become Mangan’s best known thanks to its 2009 CBC Radio 3 Bucky Award for Best Song. “Robots” is a catchy little song with an easily discernible analogy that will resonates with many people. If this sounds dismissive, well, that’s not entirely my intent — “Robots” is a fine song, but Mangan has many better. His gift for narrative and his gift for melody are each carried further at other points on the album, marking “Robots” as an excellent starter point but certainly not Mangan’s magnum opus.

The crush comes on fast and heavy, but Nice, Nice, Very Nice is no fling. This is an album for the repeat listener, an album to play repeatedly in the car, peeling back the layers as you peel away the streets, or to cuddle up to with a cup of tea on the sofa on a rainy day. Nice is a keeper, a re-read, an record to have a long and satisfying relationship with.

(Didn’t your mother always tell you to marry a Nice guy?)
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Nice, Nice, Very Nice will be released in the U.S. on August 10.

Dan Mangan plays in Portland as part of Music Fest Northwest on September 10.
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Paper Bird ::: Photo Courtesy of Gary Isaacs

Paper Bird could easily be your grandmother’s folk music. Yet timeless and gracefully kitsch-free, it’s okay for Paper Bird to be your brand of folk music, too.

This month marks the Colorado-based band’s fourth anniversary, and according to some of their home state critics who have tracked the band’s development, this may be their best year yet. Paper Bird’s second full-length album was released on the heels of July, after more than a year’s worth of creation.

When the River Took Flight ebbs and flows among a heft of sweet, harmonic songs interspersed with a couple of upbeat, down-home American folk tunes – a product of the seven-piece band’s intent to spotlight each member’s songwriting rather than appointing a few creative leads. For some bands that might spell a recipe for disaster (or at least inconsistency), but not so for the seamlessly produced Flight.

The album’s most striking quality is the rich harmony and vocal inflection that weave through every song, led by sisters Esme’ and Genevieve Patterson and trumpet player Sarah Anderson. “Yellow Sun” successfully displays their range of inflection as the trio saunters through the verses. Other songs like “Wind & Blood” literally drip as if the sisters’ vocal chords were drenched in honey.

“Colorado” is Flight’s true highlight – a feel-good anthem dedicated to their homeland that showcases the band’s cheeky songwriting talent, rounded out with solos on the harmonica and upright bass:

Well there’s nothing left to say to you
See ya later if you’re passing through
Have a good time as you’re travelin’ on

With wild forests and a golden sun
You left just enough time for us to have our fun
No offense, but we won’t miss you when you’re gone!

Paper Bird will ride off into the Washington sunset at the end of this week after gracing stages in Seattle and Tacoma.

Thursday, August 5 | Paper Bird, In Lake’ch, Dovekins, Shenandoah. Chop Suey - 8pm/$8/21+

Friday, August 6 | The Warehouse presents Paper Bird, Dovekins, Spirits of the Red City (745 Broadway, Tacoma) - 8pm/$6 | RSVP Here

Jack Wilson ::: Photo by Ryan McMackin

Jack Wilson wants to show you things. His new self titled record is a picture show; snapshots of americana through the eyes of this Austin/Seattle songwriter who has decidedly found his voice through the sometimes muddy genre labels of folk/country, ostensibly americana. With songs like the opening track “Valhalla”, Wilson starts out slow but with a certain, deliberate, momentum. It’s opening sounds of footsteps on gravel and a rainstorm in the background give way to reverb guitars and wispy horns that are scattered beautifully all across the album. Within “Valhalla” lies the outline of a record that is at one time traditional in it’s approach and at the same time from the hip. It starts out slow. A folk record with something lying just beneath the surface.

Things really get going on “The Cure”. The Wife Stealers, Jack’s backing band when he’s in Seattle, surround Wilson with a fast paced foundation for a portrait of people who can’t escape their nature, no matter how hard they try. With The Wife Stealers Wilson takes license to experiment with the boundaries of his own artistic voice within the loose parameters that is “American” music. “Black Hills Fiction” starts out a slow confederate hymn story with a whining fiddle and soft pedal steel, progressing into a black Johnny Horton style jam about the horror and reality of manifest destiny. A look at the duality of the romance in history and reality of it’s outcome. A duality that can be paralleled with the music itself that Wilson has been influenced by.

Weaving between The Wife Stealers and a more stripped down solo sound, Jack Wilson makes his way through songs that show influence as well as a independent grasp of the music that he wants to make. A portrait of a songwriter, a slide show of a road trip through the heart of an ever changing landscape, of americana music itself.

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You can see Jack Wilson tonight at The Blue Moon along with Kevin Murphy of the Moondoggies - $5/10pm

Wolf Parade ::: Photo by Meqo Sam Cecil

I probably don’t have to tell you about Wolf Parade. The Sub Pop four-piece has risen safely from obscurity to sell thousands of records and play Successful Band venues like the Showbox. What I can tell you, though, is a little something about their new album, Expo 86.

That little something is this: it is very, very good.

Expo 86 rings with the sound of a band coming into its own. Songwriters Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug have said repeatedly of Expo 86 that it was the most fun Wolf Parade album to make, that it is the most cohesive, that it best showcases the true “essence” of Wolf Parade. “We’re embracing our strengths,” Krug told Pitchfork [http://pitchfork.com/news/38417-listen-two-new-wolf-parade-songs/], “just going with our initial instincts.” The result is a confident, mature record that still makes you want to shake your booty.

One of the most obvious characteristics of Expo 86 is the way it practically crackles with energy. This stems at least partly from the recording process — the band played in ensemble, to tape, allowing their renowned live energy to be captured, at least a little, for the home listener. With headphones on and eyes closed, you can often imagine yourself in the dance hall, crowd moving sweaty all around you.

Despite the band’s assertions of fun, though, they’re not only happy-go-lucky feelings that the album generates. Underneath the prominent danceiness often lies a layer of marked anxiety. This theme is set only ten seconds into the album’s first track, “Cloud Shadow on the Mountain,” with Krug’s tense three-peat refrain of “I’d say that I was all alone.” Even more than lyrically, though, this anxiety is manifested musically: dark metal notes come fast and hard, and free-form noise swells and ebbs just beneath the melody. Krug’s tone of voice - often reminiscent of the famously tightly-wound Matt Berninger of The National - is both taut and wavering, seeming to teeter on the edge of hysteria but never falling over. This lack of release, of course, simply extends the apprehension indefinitely.

Of course, from a band with two songwriters - each preferring a markedly different aesthetic from the other - and an avowed musical philosophy of “maximalism,” nothing is ever really straightforward. The eleven songs on Expo 86 are dense, multi-layered affairs, at times almost symphonic in the way melodies conceal sub-melodies and hidden themes and refrains chase each other around. And always, of course, there is the hook, and the beat that makes you want to move.

So here we seem to have the album’s central conflict: rich, catchy pop sensibilities versus darkness and foreboding. Here’s the funny thing though: it’s really not a conflict at all. Somehow, the two personalities of Expo 86 (which, admittedly, comes from a group who has basically made a career out of harmonious dichotomy) merge beautifully to create an absolutely fascinating listening experience: suddenly you find yourself in a place where the line between fear and exultation is delightfully, unnervingly thin. You feel a restlessness, and how you use it is up to you. The moment is yours. Do you run, or do you dance?
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Wolf Parade plays Monday, July 26 at the Showbox at the Market.
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Download mp3: What Did My Lover Say (It Always Had to Go This Way) courtesy of Sub Pop

Out this week are two new compilations that highlight the diversity and breadth of Seattle’s music scene. And if you want to get a taste of what’s happening (and about to happen) locally, I recommend you pick up both.

Crybaby Studios’ Compilation features tracks from artists who currently practice and record in the subterranean complex which has been home to countless Seattle bands. Much like the studio space itself, the compilation is chock full of interesting up-and-coming bands that run the gamut of what’s happening at Capitol Hill bars every night of the week. It features tracks from folks like Absolute Monarchs, My Goodness (the only recorded track of the bands we know of), Hallways, Strong Killings and See Me River. You can pick up a copy of the compilation with the $5 cost of admission to tonight’s record release party at Neumo’s where bands featured on the comp will entertain.

While Crybaby’s comp features diverse bands who all happen to share the same practice space, the Seattle’s Best Compilation from Mario Sweet highlights Seattle’s vibrant hip hop community. The free compilation features tracks from two legends of the local hip hop community, Vitamin D. and Jake One; as well as some of the biggest names of what’s happening right now in Seattle: Mash Hall, THEESatisfaction and Grynch. If you’re a local hip hop head, you already know and love these artists and the compilation is a must have mix tape of favorites. On the flip side, the compilation serves as a solid introduction to those curious about what the 206’s burgeoning hip hop scene sounds like.

Whether you’re a local music die hard or you’re looking for an introduction to what’s happening right now in Seattle, both compilations are worthy purchases and well-done snapshots of what unsigned Seattle sounds like in 2010.

Fang Island Press Photo

Fang Island is a quintet from Brooklyn…

Do I really need to say anything more? Should I just end the preview here? I say this because everyone loves a band from Brooklyn, regardless of whether they’re any good or not. New York. The Big Apple. The City That Never Sleeps. Would it be a mistake to call it the epicenter of culture? Undoubtedly New York City is the highest point of human achievement. You want to move there because you think you can dance pretty well. Your mom and dad paid your way through art school and now you’re ready to enter the starving artist phase of your life. Your lovers always said you had an outrageous sense of fashion and you’ve been building up courage to do something spontaneous. “If I move to the BIG(ger) city, something BIG will  happen….right?” Somehow lose your metropolitan hopes and dreams amidst the skinny jean dry hump fest orgy that surrounds indie rock bands in the blogosphere.  I dare you. Better yet, I double dog dare you gentle reader.  And before you could say yes, it already happened.

Fang Island want to tell you that they sound like “everyone high-fiving everyone.” And in response to that I ask if they’ve ever been sober enough to listen to their own band before? I’ve never had a high-five that sounded this strange. This band is a “Garth” (yes, Garth from “Wayne’s World”) band. If Garth cloned himself five times, he’d write songs like this. If you look like Garth, chances are you’ll like this band. If you are a thirtysomething white guy from suburban Chicago that has a music show on public access, you’ll automatically like this band. It’s hard to explain but I’ll try.

The Brooklyn quintet borrows the “Yeah, we’re totally dudes rocking” melodies and attitude from Andrew W.K. This is going to sound crazy, but if you played select parts of certain Fang Island songs on an acoustic guitar and in a slower fashion they’d sound like Paul Simon. On top of this bizarre amalgam throw in the weird “We’re going to group chant now” vocals that all the kids are slurping up these days and you have a 23% understanding of Fang Island.  These guys also like Mega Man a lot because it sometimes sounds like they ripped off the soundtrack to our famed video game super hero. I’d tell you what Mega Man level Fang Island’s riffage brings to mind, but do you have any idea how many Mega Man games there are these days? That would take months of painstaking yet somewhat enjoyable research. The weather is changing for the better as of late. I don’t plan to be stuck inside all day.

Fang Island’s self-titled album has some rather interesting moments. “Dreamer of Dreams” sounds like the Fucking Champs, if the Fucking Champs wrote songs for ridiculously upbeat morning people. “Careful Crossers” is the sonic equivalent of a silly string fight between middle school dance team members.  You think I’m kidding but you’d hard pressed to find rock music that is this undeniably upbeat. Especially considering the sparseness of the vocals and when those are in the forefront, it’s sunshine all over the place. The Care Bears would have Fang Island in their iPod. “Life Coach” is great song title and it’s one of stronger songs on the album. The best song on the album is “Davey Crockett.” The track captures Fang Island at its most triumphant and exuberant without seeming too preposterous. Besides, how many songs are dedicated to this American folk hero?

Why am I telling you all this? It isn’t for my health; Fang Island will be at Neumos on Thursday April 29th with Caspian and Red Sparrowes. Admittedly, I’m much more into the epic heaviness of Caspian and I’ve been a fan of instrumental, atmospheric storytelling of Red Sparowes since their debut album in 2005. Fang Island is a bit much to listen to in the confines of your bedroom, but I’d bet your last dollar that they will be extremely entertaining live. Especially if they’re constantly high-fiving each other while churning out all those dual harmonized guitar lines like their press kit promises. We’re only a few months into 2010 and this show is my pick for the “Concert Most Likely to Make Patrons Space Out and Use Instrumental Music as a Background Soundtrack To Bringing A Stranger Home From the Bar” award. I’ll see you there.

Those of us who have lived in northern enough climes to experience snow in the winter months are the ones who, I think, can most perfectly relate to the mood of Lee & Willbee’s debut album North Carolina. A dichotomy of cold and warm permeates the album; much like the shiver of reality you receive emerging from bed on a frigid winter morning, with covers still wrapped tightly around your shoulders, planting your feet on the shock of cold floor, you move to evaluate what the world has brought overnight. When you pull your curtains, the world that awaits you is silent and pristine in a layer of white. It is a scene both familiar and strange, where each step forward is uncharted, no matter how many times you’ve walked that same path. North Carolina seeks to warm that snowbound silence, as much as it urges you to go out into that cold whitened landscape and explore the world anew.

Though North Carolina is moody and melancholy, this geographically dispersed threesome’s folk-meets-Notwist sound still maintains enough humor to celebrate life’s simpler pleasures: fornication, a 40 and a sack, and the resignation of self determination. The making of North Carolina recalls the making of Postal Service’s Give Up as it was crafted and recorded by three friends who currently live thousands of miles apart: Markus Willbee in Salt Lake City, Lee Chameleon in Chicago, and guitarist Patrick Roche in Seattle. The comparisons don’t stop there,  songs like “Loves Not Worth It,” feature the long delay and reverb of early Death Cab records and the album swoons with the downtrodden yet warm electronic strains of the Postal Service. Unlike other current Postal Service comparisons, this isn’t a “Ben Gibbard should kick these guys in the shins” comparison, rather the spirit of the album and how it was made is much in the same vein of what made Give Up so special.

Though electronic elements are threaded throughout the record, the nine songs still retain a distinctly low-key “bedroom” feel that envelops the listener and communicates the analog reality of the material. Given it’s such an intimate sounding album, North Carolina is best when listened to on headphones, or while driving alone in the car, where the beat of windshield wipers on high seem to perfectly keep time with tracks like “North Carolina” and “Tumbleweed.” The stand out track of the album “Day of Sunshine,” which journeys from weeping resignation to reassuring anthem, is one of my most listened to songs of 2009. North Carolina is an album well-equipped to warm the freeze of a mid-western sized blizzard or a broken heart, and it is filled with reminders to keep moving in the wake of loneliness and lost love. It is a fast winter friend.

It seems I wasn’t  the only one who felt a distinct sense of season with this record. The person who filmed the band’s first video for the song “Snowtrain” used dark winter scenes entirely:

M. Bison ::: photo by Josh Lovseth

With this week’s self-titled release, M. Bison are living up to the high standard the band has set for themselves with their live performances, by embracing what they do best — adventurous pop songs. Songs that would be completely over-the-top if they weren’t so god damn catchy, touching, full of humor, and beautifully orchestrated.

I have to confess, my fondness for this album comes as a bit of a surprise.  I’ve been seeing the band play around town for the past three years and while I’ve always been impressed with their live sets, especially two memorable  nights where they acted as Seattle’s best cover band, M. Bison was never anything I came home and listened to.  I enjoyed M. Bison, but I wasn’t excited by them. My, how things have changed. Since I received their record earlier this Fall, there’s been few shows I’ve been anticipating as much as their record release tonight at the Lo-Fi with We Wrote the Book On Connectors and Heatwarmer.

The band’s full length debut is a surprising stunner. The album opens up with “Samurai Showdown,” a song you’ll recognize if you’ve ever seen M. Bison live. It starts out all playful pop before going into a section I can only describe as an 8-bit aria. These ’80s video game inspired nuggets pepper the album in between straight up pop licks that wouldn’t sound out of place in heydays of The Kinks. (If I had to compare M. Bison to anyone, Ray Davies is the big name I would drop.) That M. Bison’s sound is hard to pin-point is a great thing. They sound like everyone and no one else. It’s theatrical and earnest. Saccharine and sarcastic. It’s piano pop, it’s soaring video game melodies, it’s a simple song that sounds so right on listen one that it feels like it’s been around for 40 years.

It’s an album of constant surprises, especially with the band’s signature twisting bridges that take songs like “Johnny’s Got a Girlfriend” and “All Things To All People” to places you’d never expect they’d go. These explorations, on themes and styles, are all made possible because M. Bison is made up of some of Seattle’s most skillful and accomplished musicians. These guys are no joke. I’ve heard the word genius used to describe pianist Brian Kinsella on more than one occasion by men who have themselves been described as savants. M. Bison are musicians’ musicians.

The album is perfectly pleasant pop that will burrow in your head, but that’s okay, because you don’t want it to leave.  A couple listens in and you’ll find yourself belting along to M. Bison’s lushly layered harmonies like it’s a show tune. I’m pleased to report that M. Bison is no longer just a band to enjoy live, they’re no longer just Seattle’s best cover band, they’re not just a fascinating quirk. With this album and their considerable talent, M. Bison is exciting, incredibly so, and definitely something I’m coming home and listening to now. Easily, one of my favorite local releases of 2009.

[Editors Note: With this post Sound on the Sound welcome's our second new writer in a week to the fold. Man-about-Ballard Brady Sprouse offered to commit his opinions on local albums to digital ink for Sound on the Sound, and we graciously accepted. In this first review, he's giving few props to a fellow Ballardian. -josh]

A friend of mine jokingly referred to Zoe Muth and The Lost High Rollers self-titled debut as “the best Emmylou Harris record in the last ten years.” The comparison is easy to make. With a voice as sharp and equally as smooth as Harrisʼ, Muth lets her songwriting style - deftly reinforced by the serious country chops of The Lost High Rollers - create a sound, and record, distinctly her own.

You gotta love that she played some of her earliest gigs at the rough and tumble The Bit Saloon. Among some of the hardest punk and hardcore acts this side of The Funhouse, Zoe was styling her sound with songs like “You Only Believe Me When Iʼm Lying,” full of glossy pedal steel and dusty mountain strings, and “Hey Little Darlinʼ” a swinging folky kind of honky tonk, with equal parts Flying Burrito Brothers and Ira and Charlie Louvin. Together they make a perfect one-two opening to a record that takes you back somewhere in time when country music wasnʼt ruled by pop templates and crossover singles.

Stream: Zoe Muth & the Lost High Rollers - “You Only Believe Me When I’m Lying”
Download it via KEXP’s Song of the Day (August 7, 2009)

As it evolves, the album starts to feel like driving an old pickup somewhere in Montana or the deserts of eastern Washington. The sixth song out of twelve is fittingly called “Middle of Nowhere”, which is how it sounds. A loping mosey of a song, lamenting that being home can be as far away as being lost in the middle of nowhere. “The Running Kind” with itʼs wispy folkiness and delta dobro, and “Hard Luck Love” and itʼs Cajun accordion create a couplet that keeps the listener moving through the lost times, through lost love, and eventually back home again.

The thing I like most about this record is, simply put, it sounds good in a bar. Itʼs the kind of thing you want to hear on a quiet afternoon with a beer and whiskey. Happy or sad, on the road, or two blocks from home.