New Music: Hot Cross, The Bummer Road

Hot Cross - Silence is Failure (Hope Division 2007)

Hot Cross - Risk Revival / Hope Division

I think one of the reasons I love writing for this blog so much is because I get the opportunity to write about whatever I want however I want to write about it. We don't have ads, we're not here to be a part of the blog culture just 'cause we're bandwagoneers, we're not looking to give you the very first heads-up on the latest n' greatest (or hatest, as it were). We write because we love this music and, that failing, we are so baffled by its success that we feel obliged to comment on the reactions. For me (and maybe me alone), Hot Cross falls unabashedly in the former.

In some respects, I suppose, it is more noble or "in better taste" to have the latest Ed Banger release or an extended digression on a recent Vice signing. Don't get me wrong: I love both of those labels to death. But I don't want you to expect the expected. Hot Cross for me is a band that deserves mention partly because they are so far removed from this whole blogosphere thing. This is a band that has guys who have been around in assorted East Coast scenes for years (most notably as members of Saetia, Off Minor and, er, Interpol). Occasionally dismissed by elitists as an inferior Drive Like Jehu or a third-wave Fugazi, Hot Cross continue to earn the respect of people who still think punk has a soul.

I don't want to make assumptions about your taste as a reader because I think that's part of why "blogs" are looked upon with such disdain. But sometimes as a reader you just have to stand back from a review and ask yourself, "Is this guy full of it?" Though the answer is often blurred here at Audiversity as it is in life, let me be clear: Featuring Hot Cross is not a move of desperation. This is an album I am genuinely enamored with partly because it represents a refreshing change of pace (Ergo, not 4/4) and, man, is it nice to hear some guitars again.

Risk Revival is their second album, a mere four years after Cryonics. Translation: It's been too long. So what's changed? Well, in either a brilliant move or a horrible one, only the production has been touched up a tad. I'm ignoring the split 7s and the Fair Trades & Farewells EP which always felt like stop-gaps. This is still a tight-as-hell release and one listen to the militant "Rejoinder" will confirm that. But after so many years with only a few interim releases on Level Plane and now the always-curious Equal Vision (Hope Division is just an offshoot), you'd think they would've traveled the way of These Arms Are Snakes or even a Pretty Girls Make Graves, fed up with the usual scene fare to the point that they retreat to textures and, heaven forbid, lite ballads.

Not a chance. There's still all the fury of their early releases in tracks like the "fuck off"-driven "Fatefully," but despite the stumbling of the early songs which feel nothing less than completely hackneyed, there's enough going on with this record to feel like it's not a total stumbling block. There's something about "Silence is Failure" here that cannot be ignored in its Jehu-like guitar onslaught. City of Caterpillar would be proud, anyway. Those first swells carry on for the entire song, and even though Billy Werner's vocals are more distinct than they ever were in Saetia (which can be either pleasure or pain depending on how much you can stomach), he does the smart thing here by stepping aside and letting Casey Boland's guitars do the carrying. At just 2m43s, this isn't a song that should feel epic - but it does.

That's credit to the band, who might be smarter now if not more ambitious. Werner may want to be a pop idol here, but Risk Revival is too strong not to sell the kids with their arms still folded. Earth to hairXcore: Grow up and get down. Hot Cross is here to help.












The Bummer Road - We Bark Cos We're Carrying Weight (Child of Microtones / Time-Lag 2006)

The Bummer RoadDeep Space Circuit / Child of Microtones/Time-Lag

Growing up and getting down, yes. That's what expanding the mind and letting the creative juices flow is all about, isn't it. Nobody knows this as well as The Bummer Road: Better known as Matt Valentine and Erika Elder's backing band from earlier this year on Green Blues off Ecstatic Peace, The Bummer Road made a name for themselves on the road last summer when they were touring with the aforementioned couple. It truly was the summer of the Bummer. Don't forget to tip your waitresses.

Green Blues was my first experience with this group, all backwoods New England acid-folk and none of the artificially enhanced digitized landscaping so common to psychedelia these days. I mean, there's a time and a place for Spiritualized... But The Bummer Road just seem to settle in the ears so much better, don't they? Give "We Bark Cos We're Carrying Weight" a listen, for example. This was recorded live and yet you can still hear the ethereality of Elder's voice... Or wait, is that a slide guitar? That's definitely a harmonica. Okay, reverby guitars. Tambourine? The call of some far-off animal or the cavalier roaming of an electric guitar? In the murky world of a Bummer Road live show, the difference is either nonexistent or so marginal it's irrelevant. The point is, you're there with them in the depths. And the only way out is through two CDs of beautiful folk backdrops. The scenery never looked so good.

Deep Space Circuit is actually two discs split evenly between nine songs that reach every corner of the music-as-experience globe. "We Bark Cos We're Carrying Weight" (which is alternately titled "We Bark Cos We're Carryin' Weight" on Kennedy Wings, the Buffalo, NY CD-R just two releases after this one) is modest at just under eight minutes; for a real representation of what The Bummer Road can do given a little lee-way with their live shows, "Who Do You Love Too Much" clocks in at a modest 35 minutes. But it never gets old! I could listen to this stuff all day if I wasn't cursed by fate to love other music as well. Does it sound aimless? Did that noise pedal that just kicked in bother you? Forget it. Just sit back and relax. Enjoy life a little bit. Pet a dog, plant some flowers, take a jog in the park. Just forget it! There's so much to envision and think about and contemplate and ease into when you're listening to Deep Space Circuit, and for once I don't have to use obscure cosmonauts to describe the situation.

There's an otherworldliness about this album and this band, sure, but that's not why I fell into the trap. Sometimes I just want to know what the hell they've got cooking deep in the forests of Maine, beyond the college folk of Orono, beyond the hackneyed images of sea-ravaged lighthouses and lobsters along the coast, beyond the very idea of what it means to be New England acid-folk (Why does the location have to mean anything?). If you can get your hands on anything these people have put out, get it. The releases are almost always rare (Green Blues is the exception) and the quality is almost always better than you'll need. I'm not even taking drugs when I listen to this, that's a true story and maybe the best one I have to tell. I just love the feeling of the open 'Road. Hopefully you will too.