New Music: Make Believe, Hella, Sodastream

Make Believe - Pat Tillman, Emmitt Till - Of Course (Flameshovel 2006)


Make Believe – Of Course / Flameshovel

I’ll tell you what, it’s not easy to keep the Kinsella’s in order, nonetheless trying to remember who played what in which band with what moniker where, when and how. But if you are at all familiar with the Chicago indie-scene and the Kinsella name, then you know that Tim is the most infamous. The Make Believe brand of Kinsella music is often slated as the rock version of Joan of Arc, which is either described as pretentious or crafty depending on your personal feelings, but always disjointed and knotty. Tim yelps absurd/inventive lyrics over almost nonexistent structures of ragged guitar, piercing keyboards and avant-garde drumming. Personally, I have always been more intrigued than displeased with this project, because I just can’t comprehend the songwriting process that goes into creating such organized cacophony. I prefer this album to their debut full-length, Shock of Being, but it still doesn’t approach the self-titled EP; obviously, a sound so distraught in its essence is more appropriate in small doses.




Hella - Cafeteria Bananas - Acoustics (5RC 2006)


Hella – Acoustics / 5RC

For the final act of Hella’s 5-year career as a duo, they have recently expanded to a quintet (how speakers will be able to contain the addition of three more noisemakers to Hella’s already splattering sound is beyond me), guitar exploiter Spencer Seim and 8-armed drummer Zach Hill have stripped the amps from six fan-favorite tracks from their 2002 release Hold Your Horse Is and 2004’s The Devil Isn’t Red. With Hill on ‘tambourine’ and Seim on ‘hippy axe,’ the intricacies of their rampant spazz-rock come front-and-center revealing obsessively fine-tuned songwriting rather than unbridled noise improv which a passing fan may interpret when the electronic flare and feedback frame their sound. This is obviously an album that will please longtime fans a bit more than inquisitive ears, but regardless of your Hella background, it is a helluva cool album (sigh, I can’t believe I just did that). Never has the acoustic guitar sounded so wonderfully menacing.




Sodastream - Reservations - Reservations (Hausmusik 2006)


Sodastream – Reservations / Hausmusik

The gentle chamber-pop of Australia’s Sodastream may be the perfect soundtrack to a very early rainy morning, the ones meant for glazed staring out the window and 4-day-old beards. Beyond Karl Smith’s downcast vocals, which sound like a down-and-out Stuart Murdoch of Belle & Sebastian, the lush arrangements anchored by Pete Cohen’s omnipresent double bass are effectively dimmed, letting the album resonate even more when allowed to breathe in a room with quality speakers. While most of the album is composed of solemn folk-pop that would make even Nick Drake sigh a bit more, songs like the title track reveal that Sodastream are in essence writing pop tunes, but just choose to let them drag their feet rather than skip. Aesthetic and geographical descendents of the Go-Betweens, Smith and Cohen’s effectiveness is in their ability to subdue their potentially violent emotions into a catharsis of barely strummed acoustic guitars and aching vocal melodies.