Houston Calls: Update

Houston Calls, by their own definition, sounds like, “Green Day had sex with Motion City Soundtrack who in turn completed the threesome with straight up Pop.” Houston Calls is Jersey-based group making their name in the music world as fantastic story tellers and the producers of some sick shows. "Most of the songs follow a plot," says vocalist/lyricist Tom Keiger about their full-length album, ‘A Collection of Short Stories’. "I like to tell stories of my experiences, mostly in the third person so I can sit back and relate as well." ‘Elephant and Castle’, for example, is about a young girl making a break from her childhood home; every song on their full-length is a universal story.

In their first year the band put out a four-song demo, and in the summer of 2004 their five-song EP was produced. 2004 was a huge year for them; they took the reigns of their careers and proposed that Pure Volume and Absolute Punk sponsor them for a nation-wide tour, which the band booked. “That was our first awesome tour,” says Tom. “We pride ourselves in our energetic stage antics. Our whole premise is we love playing music and love having fun. [Drive-Thru Records founders] Richard Reines and Stefanie Reines saw us play in New Jersey and New York, and decided to sign us.” Drive-Thru Records is also the label of bands such as The Early November, Halifax, Hellogoodbye, and New Found Glory.

‘A Collection of Short Stories,’ produced in 2005, has taken the band to new heights and since then they’ve been touring, advertising, and generally just being amazing. Currently they’re in the process of putting out a new demo, ‘Modest Manifesto’. To check them out yourself and track news on their upcoming demo, visit their MySpace: www.myspace.com/houstoncalls
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This article was written nearly two years ago, before Houston Calls produced The End of an Error on October 14, 2008. After a few member changes and a tour with Amber Pacific the band announced that they would be disbanding for good. It would be a shame if every person possible didn’t go to their last official show scheduled for August 29, 2009, which I may actually be making a weekend travel for. The End of an Error delivers Houston Calls’ promise of an upbeat, power-charged album but also twists in a few more somber, slower songs that seem to drip emotion, such as “The Oaks On Prince Street” and “Stay With Me Tonight”, also known as “Bittersweet Chase”. You can hear their entire discography on their MySpace music page, so why haven’t you heard?

Panic At The Disco

For this addition to Why Haven’t You Heard? I’m going to switch things around and tell you exactly why you haven’t heard Panic At The Disco (without the exclamatory gimmick)’s second, well-anticipated album Pretty. Odd. Their opener for the album, “We’re So Starving”, promises “we’re still the same band,” and sorely disappoints, if not outright lies. Three core elements of Panic’s original sound were abstract lyrics, intense techno, and balance; the first album featured two word-less techno jams to flavor the album. Needless to say there’s nothing wrong with adding more guitar rifts and solos to a band’s sound, but completely replacing techno with old-rock guitar makes for a shell-shocking difference.

The repetition in this album is overbearing to say the least - the chorus to “I Have Friends in Holy Spaces” has every line ending with ‘friends’. And yes, the worst has happened; in “She’s and Handsome Woman”, Panic depends on a hook to carry the song through, as though it were a life raft to keep them from drowning under an atrocious opening song and that headache “Nine In the Afternoon” all of us have the misfortune of knowing thanks to radio play. As sad as it may be, “Nine In the Afternoon” is the only song on the album that even attempt to resemble their original sound; indeed in “Folkin’ Around”, which is straight from a hoedown with banjo and violin, the only recognizable aspect of the old Panic is Brendan Urie’s voice.

Granted there are some interesting stories on the album that are merely poorly delivered, such as “She Had The World” and “Behind The Sea”, but a band cannot hope to carry the weight of fifteen tracks on the shoulders of two decent concepts. If one wished to transfer from country to some vague form of indie, Pretty. Odd. would be a perfect match for them. For previous Panic! fans who want to give the album a try the best way to approach it is as though Panic! At The Disco and Panic At The Disco are two entirely different bands. It may be beneficial to look into whether Pretty. Odd. is Panic’s withdrawal from some club drug that influenced their first album and switching over to opium. It also may be safe to say that their sparkle left the band when they ditched the exclamation point. To hear for yourself, check out www.myspace.com/panicatthedisco. Proceed with caution.

This Town Needs Guns

It’s most likely you haven’t heard This Town Needs Guns is because of the band’s utterly sadistic delay of releasing their record – getting a hold of this band’s music can be a trying task, especially if you become as entranced with them as I have. This Town Needs Guns is a brilliantly intermixed brand of ‘math’ and indie rock, assembled like a precious gift of Oxford, UK to our ears, which have for so long been in starving need for epiphany-inspiring music. For those of you who know ‘math’ only as an assailing subject in school, let me interject and mention breifly that it is also a rhythmically complex guitar method combining metric inconsistencies, dissonant chords, and angular melodies to create a truly unique and intriguing sound. Rock Sound has recently said of their CD debut, Animals, that these boys , “… take care of the wizardry, combining math-rock time signatures, intricate guitar / bass tapestries and a rip-roaring vocal that swoops above the virtuoso sonics like a musical trapeze artists.” Normally I will seldom bring in a quote from an outside source to describe music, but in this case Rock Sound has hit the nail, full-force and without hesitancy, right on the head.

Active since 2004, This Town Needs Guns is a complete mystery as far as background goes. Nowhere on their official website, Wikipedia page, or MySpace can you find anything about how they met, what brought them together, or their music processes. The members of the band are Stuart Smith, Tim Collis, Jamie Cooper, and Chris Collis and the focal point of their style has been the guitar work of Tim interspersed with highly complex drumming and distributed, melodic bass. Of their musical style, it’s definitely become more technical and the change is evident when comparing their first few musical snacks off Cats and Cats and Cats, with the use of asymmetrical meter signatures and the utter abandonment of distortion and other guitar effects. They are currently signed with four recording companies: Big Scary Monster Records (UK), Sargent House (USA), Rallye (Japan), and Yellow Ghost Records (Australia).

Their full-length album, Animals, has become wildly popular in the UK since the album’s release in October of 2008. Unfortunately for us wayward fans in the US, we’ll have to wait until February to get our hands on Animals. As fully implied by the name, this CD features tracks with animal titles, such as ‘Panda’, ‘Lemur’, ‘Chinchilla’, and ‘Badger’, and all with the similar themes of love, deception, denial, and coming to terms with reality. One track to really get into is ‘Baboon’, which is nearly guaranteed to give you shivers as Stuart Smith, vocals, peaches you of obsessive love and deceit. You owe it to yourself to give this band a listen, or twelve. Check it out at: www.myspace.com/thistownneedsguns

Lenka

There are several reasons why most people have apparently not heard Lenka’s new self-titled debut album. Part of it may be because the general public can’t seem to multitask and therefore are stuck on Colbie Caillet and Sara Bareillis – not to say the three young artists have similar sounds so much as they have that similar, pop-y feeling. There’s always the chance that Regina Spektor and Feist fans feel like Lenka’s attempting to intrude upon their well-earned territory. Maybe it’s that Lenka’s voice closely resembles that of Greta Salpeter from The Hush Sound, who many fans say the band could have done without. Quite possibly it’s all the pessimistic ‘glass-half-empty’ negativity under all the light, flowery piano. For me, a self-proclaimed lyrical connoisseur, it’s the LiveJournal confessions that turn me off the most.

Lenka Kripac, born in 1978, can more or less be considered a ripened adult. I’m not trying to insinuate, by any means, that 30 is an old age; certainly by looking at Lenka you’d never think she was a day older than 20. However, Lenka doesn’t make it subtle how reluctant she is to show this fact about herself. For one example, there’s “We Will Not Grow Up”. On her official website and MySpace she boasts in third person, “Others may struggle to get in touch with their inner child; Lenka never lost hers,” while posting pictures of herself autographic two young fans’ poster and captioning it, “3 little girls…” We can tell Lenka’s inner child is reluctant to grow out of the whining preteen stage in most of her songs, such as ‘Trouble Is A Friend’ where she preaches, “Trouble will find you no matter where you go, oh oh/ No matter if you're fast no matter if you're slow, oh oh.” We’d expect someone with 30 years of life experience to have something more profound to discuss, as opposed to, “… all I ever want to be is anything I'm not/ Gimme a break, a little escape/ I am so tired of being me,” (‘Anything I’m Not’), or at the very least not contradict themselves in the same song (“…I will always be, I will always be me, that I know/ But oh, even though I'm happy being me”).

‘The Show’, the only song from the album you may heard on the radio, is entirely the diary entry of an awakening Absurdist, but it’s pop, un-folk sound makes it a success. ‘Knock Knock’ is a touching love song, and a well-needed break from all the ‘life’s too hard’ lamenting on the CD masked by Lenka’s wispy voice and flimsy melodies. Overall, it’s a good use of onomatopoeia. ‘Like A Song’ does indeed use a hook but in a very T.a.T.u.-esque, haunting way that allows this song to stand out against the rest of the album. It’s up to the listener if it stands out in a good way or not; I suppose it depends on whether you consider, “Ahoooh/ Dum da di da/ Da da da dum,” a compelling set of lyrics. Maybe if you’re into werewolves? Or, if sheep are more your style, there’s always ‘Dangerous And Sweet’: “I’m sorry I hurt you/ I know that like me you can be oversensitive/ Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba…” Love her or hate her, whatever your reason, check it at: www.myspace.com/lenkamusic

The New Pornographers

You may have heard of “The Electric Version” by The New Pornographers off of the incredibly popular game, Rock Band, but if truth be told too many people have waited too long to be introduced to this wonderful product of Vancouver. As stated on their official website, “The New Pornographers formed in 1997, almost immediately recorded the classic ‘Letter From An Occupant,’ and it was on.” These truly multi-talented Canadians have since produced three more full-length albums, “… and they continue to enjoy bigger (and taller and smarter) audiences.”

Multi-talented is truly an understatement; each member of The New Pornographers contributes several musical medias to the band’s sound. A. C. Newman is in charge of vocals, guitar, piano [specializing in Wurlitzer and Casio], mandolin, percussion, melodeon, and bass. John Collins rocks the glockenspiel, mandolin, guitar, baritone guitar, bass, keyboard, and tambourine. Blaine Thurier accompanies on Fender Rhodes piano and sampler, closely related to a synthesizer. Then there’s Danny Behjar for vocals and shakers, Kathryn Calder with vocals and piano, Kurt Dahl for drums and percussion, Neko Case with vocals, and Todd Fancey on guitar, banjo, and mandolin.

A.C. Newman is credited for culminating the band’s name, claiming he was inspired by The Pornographers, a Japanese film. As creepily convenient and ironic as can be, The New Pornographers embody a Jimmy Swaggart, a pioneer televangelist, quote from when he called rock and roll “the new pornography”. One of their crazy music videos is for “Myriad Harbour” and features everything from afros sprouting various personalities to hands together in prayer from beards in this visual psychedelic depiction of going nowhere in life.

The band's first three albums each ranked in the top 40 on The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop annual poll, and their first album Mass Romantic was ranked by Blender magazine in 2007 as the 24th best indie album of all time [never fear, Arcade Fire fans; Funerals was ranked sixth]. For a scrumptious sampling of The New Pornographer’s flowery folk-pop as well as some excellent group shots of the Vancouver gang being… well, as Canadian as photographically possible, check out: www.myspace.com/thenewpornographers