ALBUM: Dangermouse and Sparklehorse present: Dark Night of the Soul

Mentioned in bits and pieces for years, and from seeds planted as early as 2005, Dangermouse and Sparklehorse Present: Dark Night of the Soul is a wide-reaching collaboration a long time coming. Tracks crafted as early as four years ago by Dangermouse (Brian Burton) and Sparklehorse (Mark Linkous) were sent out to a slew of high profile collaborators who lent their talents, most of them appearing on several songs playing various instruments, popping up for background vocals, and aiding in production. Just a few of these names are Grandaddy's Jason Lytle, The Pixies' Frank Black, and Iggy Pop. Dangermouse, keeping up with his controlled mating of the film and music realms, includes among DNotS' laundry list of guests some guy named David Lynch (he directs movies or something?), who contributed a 100-page book of photography as a visual companion to the LP. Oh and he also wrote lyrics and sings on no less than two tracks, including the dusty, eponymous closing track. The album's completion in 2008 was followed by hazy disputes between Dangermouse and label EMI that delayed and even threatened it's release. In 2009 a hardcover, limited edition of David Lynch's photography book quickly sold out. With the music still under wraps legally, but in fact already floating around the internet, the book included a printed, but blank and recordable cd-r with a note to "use it as you will". Sadly, guest artist Vic Chestnutt passed away in December '09, followed by the suicide of Mark Linkous in May '10. July 12th saw the official release of the audio portion of Dangermouse and Sparklehorse Present: Dark Night of the Soul.

Merging Burton's cinematic production with Linkous' melancholy tone, DNotS is a detailed affair, skirting genres from grimy bar tunes to fragile pop, and generally playing in movements pulling you from one scene to another. Starting with the plodding, mournful tone of "Revenge" featuring The Flaming Lips and the pastoral twang meets bass stomp of "Just War" with Gruff Rhys, the being now known and SparkleMouse ventures far from these beginnings, planting firmly in the surf guitar jam of "Little Girl" before dropping into a slow, growling fuzz for "Angel's Harp" with Frank Black. Iggy Pop closes out the first half of DNotS with "Pain", his baritone thick among one of the more sonically raw tracks to be found here.

Computer blips and synth-tweaked vocals over a heavy pulsing bass brings us to the blissed-out "Star Eyes (I Can't Catch It)", the first sign of Lynch for everyone except the 5000 owners of the DNotS photobook, then Jason Lytle brings the grime back with "Everytime I'm With You", asking "What the hell else are we supposed to do?" in a nihilistic love-hate song about getting fucked up repeatedly. In an album wild with Dangermouse's production flourishes, "Insane Lullaby" is particularly interesting, with James Mercer's voice hovering over a bed of instruments that are largely obscured by a boiling 16th note pummel of distorted drums. Nina Persson of the Cardigans and Suzanne Vega lend the album it's most upbeat tone yet with their respective tracks, "Daddy's Gone" and "The Man Who Played God", before turning on it's heel to the morbid "Grim Augury", with Vic Chesnutt's vividly dark imagery both disturbing and engaging the listener. David Lynch shows up again for the closing track "Dark Night of the Soul", pulling the curtains on the album with an echo-drenched disappearing scrawl.

While Dark Night of the Soul has it's weak moments, even for them it's a beautiful assembly of an ambitious project, pulling together different art forms into a multi-sensory landscape, with a general clarity of vision that's surprising, given the broad range of talent involved. If this is the modern equivalent of the supergroup album, I'm in.

4 / 5

ALBUM: Taproot, Plead the Fifth

I first heard Taproot in my friends attic bedroom, so late at night that it was early morning. Taproot has been insisting for a while now that they're a rock band, but that album was metal. I loved Gift for it's balance of emotion, heaviness and melody, and I've always thought their vocal harmonies were impressively well chosen. I saw them at Stubb's while they were touring for their second album Welcome, and singer Stephen Richards jumped off the inside balcony and busted ASS when he landed on the stage. I really wish I remembered during what song. It took me years to realize that lots of people who've heard Taproot haven't heard Gift, and often they've only heard "Poem" on the radio. I still like the band's first three major releases, but they have more rock and less metal every time they come around. They're still good at what they're doing, but it's not my cup of tea a lot the time. 2010 offering Plead the Fifth is the band's "getting back to our roots" album, a claim that always worries me. What's surprising is that at times it actually does.

Taproot's newest album came out in May of this year. I missed it's release, because honestly 2008's Our Long Road Home wasn't what I wanted to hear from them. In interviews about OLRH the band acknowledged that the album would gain them some fans at the cost of losing some fans, and I fell into column B, but I can't fault the band for going their own way; even material I don't like from Taproot sounds pretty genuine. But enough about that. Taproot's latest release Plead the Fifth isn't so much a full step back, but it will likely remind people that they know where they stepped forward from. The angry churn of 2000's "mentobe" and 2010's album opener "Now Rise" are indeed cut from a similar cloth. Part of this is Mike DeWolf and Phil Lipscomb's return to the low A tuning of their earlier days. Stephen Richards' scream has always sounded tight and well controlled, but on this opening track, and surprisingly often through the whole album, he's letting loose in ways unprecedented. Two and a half minutes into "Now Rise" Richards rips his lowest bellow and highest shriek that I can remember, in the space of four seconds. The equally aggressive verse of "Game Over" follows, finally letting up into a chorus that characterizes the other, softer side of Taproot's dynamic coin . The more upbeat tone of long-titled single "Fractured (Everything I Said Was True)" sets the tone for much of the rest of Plead the Fifth, but the more guttural riffs do show up from time to time. Fans always accuse heavy bands of getting less heavy over time, and that's because they usually do, but that kind of energy takes focus, and you know, entropy. Taproot, as a rock band, has long focused on making their songs distinct from each other, and through their career they've used an increasing assortment of tools to do this. That they are still adding to that toolbox is the most compelling thing about this album, and that they can still reach the intense end of their spectrum should be refreshing even for old fans not fond of their new direction. But except for informed retrospective moments, this album is in keeping with the direction they're music has been taking all along. If fans of Taproot's heavier style drop off because of Plead the Fifth, it will at least be a harder decision this time. Who knows, this renewed aggression might even bring some back.

2 / 5

ALBUM: Norma Jean, Meridional

Okay, I didn't get into Norma Jean for a long time. Every time I listened to them over the years, I've liked them a little more, and they've been one of those bands that I wanted to like more than I actually did. I knew they were pretty cool, and obviously talented, but some intangible something held me from being a real 'fan'.

I think Meridional finally got through to me though. Damn. Well, I like Norma Jean now. You never know when something like this is going to happen, but such is life. Nothing left but to sit my friends and family down and break the news. What's important is that I'm happy.

Decibel dubs Norma Jean's latest work "Career Defining", and Alternative Press claims it to be "Norma Jean's first true masterpiece", and they've earned this praise. From the first track, 'Leaderless and Self Enlisted' (available for free here) Norma Jean is confident through the whole of Meridional, both in sonic attitude, and in decidedly adventurous and sophisticated songwriting. Tracks like "Blood Burner" still bring the pain, but neckbreakers like this are tempered by long-fused bombs like "A Media Friendly Turn for the Worse" and "Falling From the Sky: Day Seven", which crescendo slowly, their bee-swarm guitars slowing into creeping melodies. Five albums into their career, the band doesn't have to prove much, and they know their strengths but don't lean on them. That said, the album covers a lot of ground, and in fact is among their longest playing releases. The songs are varied both among and within themselves, in a way that builds momentum rather than sounding scatterbrained. Among the heave and jerk of tempo in Meridional, the bands use the abrupt time changes they have been so good at in the past, but build and release tension with them in a way that's elegant and not flashy. Jeremy Griffith brings a beautiful production to Meridional (recorded over February of this year), making the full album a rich, dramatic experience, with the band coloring passages with instruments from keyboards and organs to pedal steel, and Griffith providing some piano and backing vocals himself. The bass shifts around between clank and boom, and holds the bottom end down while occasionally being melodically surprising. The drums are powerful and precise, and the guitars are thick as they wash over you. Rather than put out a half-hour of facemelters, Norma Jean has brought an album that unfolds as it plays out, and rewards repeat listening.

Forgive me, Norma Jean? I'm sorry about before, there I said it.

4.5 / 5 stars