Three Imaginary Girls - The Control Group

People Eating People

Chris Estey — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:42:32 +0000

8.7

http://www.amazon.com/People-Eating/dp/B002PHVHF8/?tag=wwwthreeimagicom-20

I joined in the wailing when Mon Frere went down in 2007. Leader Nouela Johnson had such potential, her way-out style and insouciant songs wouldn't just stop there, would they? It seemed very James Marilyn Dean Monroe, a fickle flash-burn of utter musical sweetness gone before the world could be convinced. Then Johnson went on to play keyboards with Say Hi and other bands, and it seemed our frantic farewell may have been rightfully certain.

Now, like your most tender enemy and worst friend calling in the middle of the night, Johnson is back in Seattle, using her sly and swaggering voice to bob and spin over sauntering piano bomp in the self-titled People Eating People. Mark Gajadhar from Past Lives, the Blood Brothers and Champagne Champagne has helped her construct a delightful soundtrack for a dimly seductive grotto at the edge of night. Joined by members of Sirens Sister (Ben Libay) and Black Houses (Christiaan Morris), People Eating People seems like a very healthy project for a band title about cannibalism and a collection of kill-cabaret songs that nakedly studies psychic vampirism and dysfunctional trysts.

Johnson's fingers are light on the keys, and the others don't add anything obtrusive, so the focus is in the stories swaggered out. "All the hospitals are closed tonight," she pines on the second track, "take all those pills, fake all our pain." On "I Hate All My Friends" Johnson clenches her fists and chokes out, "All they ever do is take from me, lie through their teeth." She scrambles all over the piano helplessly till she blurts, "You made me angry, you made me mean." She isn't self-deluded by her own role in the destruction though. Halfway past the mid-point of PEP she boldly confesses "I'm evil, I don't need a supernatural trip, demons or holy ghosts ... I can fuck things up myself." In a haunting Peggy Lee-style torcher, she throws it all to the bins and finishes the album with "I'm nobody special, you're nobody special, let's rage" ("Let's Rage").

This is crushed velvet, chain-smoking, sour girl music, still pretty as a punch from hell, but the damp-peeled absinthe labels didn't take away the scraping of her ego even if they gave the burgundy-painted nails something to do for awhile. People Eating People is a great way for Nouela Johnson to start a new flame, and for us to rekindle one we thought went out on us.

Love Is Not Pop

Chris Estey — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 01:37:25 +0000

http://www.amazon.com/Love-Not-Pop-Perro-Del/dp/B002LVAZQK/?tag=threeimagi-20

elperrodelmar.jpg

Gothernburg, Sweden's sweet-voiced Sarah Assbring has teamed up with Rasmus Hagg of the duo Studio this time out, for the third album from El Perro del Mar, Love Is Not Pop.

"Album" might be pushing it, if you're looking for length, as this is seven new songs plus three remixes. Following up 2008's From The Valley To The Stars, which had oodles of small little ditties about desire and deities, "L is for Love" is just as romantic and lyrically ambitious, but deeper and more concerned with human amore. Besides a splendid if sobering adaptation of author-theologian G.K. Chesterton poem "It Is Something (To Have Wept)" Assbring (and Hagg) have crafted a stainless examination about what makes our bodies warm, and what turns our hearts cold.

"Gotta Get Smart" is classic, wounded-sounding El Perro del Mar, kicking off the cycle with one of its strongest choruses. However, the self-hatred of tracks from the first record is long gone, as Assbring isn't going to take it anymore (compare with "Dog" from the self-titled debut) and specifically describes why in the song. After the full-on spiritual vulnerability of the second album, Assbring sounds empowered and thoughtful throughout Love Is Not Pop, and more confident than ever ("Let Me In," "A Better Love"). "Change of Heart" is quietly, classically tough, with a timeless continental pop edge never heard before in El Perro del Mar's oeuvre.

My favorite track would have to be the cover of Lou Reed's "Heavenly Arms," though, because Assbring flips the gender assumption, even with the glaring, obstinate line "Only a woman can love a man," destroying its meaning by singing it before she croons the repeated one-word chorus, "Sylvia". I can only imagine what her intentions were in doing this, but I don't think it was a conscious attempt at subversion. In any case, it transforms Reed's optimistic finale from the darkly legendary "Blue Mask" 1980 come-back into something even more joyful and affirmative. People who know the track will probably scratch their heads wondering why she included it, until they hear its beauty and placement in the order of songs here.

Love Is Not Pop is brief, and takes a few listens to get past its pristine construction, but the intelligence of the lyrics and the way the topic of love is handled reminds me of a great R&B concept album from the 70s. Back then we couldn't have imagined what "Swedish soul" might have sounded like, but artists like Sarah Assbring have successfully merged the Abba with the strong-female elegance of the most creative Motown singles, and Love Is Not Pop adds a new angle to El Perro del Mar's uplifting message.

Gothernburg, Sweden's sweet-voiced Sarah Assbring has teamed up with Rasmus Hagg of the duo Studio this time out, for the third album from El Perro del Mar, Love Is Not Pop.

The Control Group keeps sweetening us with the sounds of Sweden

Chris Estey — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:40:34 +0000

Mariam Wallentin & Andreas Werliin are a married Gonthenburg, Sweden couple who make warm butterscotch sauce on vanilla ice cream music with just voice and some drums and a little sound splash here and there. Their band Wildbirds & Peacedrums is coming to the States in September, but let their new album "The Snake" help cool you down before the fall.

If you're like Pitchfork ("8.3"), The Guardian ("sensual, pulverizing, and mesmeric"), MOJO ("exceptional"), Uncut ("extraordinary"), or me ("Sweet!") it will massage away the prickly heat of the day as previous Control Group releases from El Perro Del Marr did. This Seattle-started label seems to have a sexy finger on the vein of the Nordic-soul fetish, and songs like "My Heart" and "There Is No Light" should be getting tons of airplay on certain stations with a similar taste in exquisitely made minimalism.

They toured supporting Lykke Li last February and their return here will spread through October. TCG also announces that the next El Perro Del Marr will be out around that time (September 22, specifically), their third one States-side entitled "Love Is Not Pop." Sweet!

Schoolyard Heroes want your soul for Christmas

ChrisB — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:19:38 +0000

Schoolyard Heroes are releasing a 2-song holiday single today: "I want your soul for Christmas" and "Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel!".

From The Valley To The Stars

Chris Estey — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:23:37 +0000

7.7

http://www.amazon.com/Valley-Stars-Perro-del-Mar/dp/B00141LH56

elperrodelmar08apr.jpg

Sarah Assbring's second full-length for The Control Group as El Perro del Mar is a perfect definition of the word 'album.' It is a 16-track cycle of relaxed, sweetly melodic, organ-kissed soul music -- 'soul' in the sense the Beach Boys had soul, the teenage symphonies to god kind of universalist nature-loving soul music -- in which hardly any particular tracks stand out, but the whole thing taken together is rewarding.

Assbring's first album for TCG (a collection from a handful of limited European releases) had many more rough edges and much darker lyrical turns, dealing with low self-esteem and relational despair. The often acoustic-strummed music seemed a combined attempt with the plain and sometimes pained words to simplify the dimmed twists in the mirror of the spirit. From The Valley To The Stars seems like a genuine attempt to evolve a new pattern from such stark revelation, based in the almost-minimalism of the previous album.There seems to be a stronger desire to heal the hurts of the heart, though: The lyrics are even more basic, rotating around generic gospel imagery and optimistic phrasings, and the loveliness has been expanded, guided along by collaborators' Bohlin's oboe, Deramus's double bass, Ford's horn, Lidell's trumpet, and Synneby's vocal and sitar. Those instruments aren't adornments -- there are no rocking backing tracks to any of this. It's Sunday afternoon parlor room soft and proudly so.

The song titles indeed say it all -- "Do Not Despair," "The Sun Is An Old Friend," "You Belong To The Sky Now" -- and what is left to do is just curl up with the record's warm joy, if you're so inclined. Kind of like -- and I don't mean this in any critical way -- a musical version of the Teletubbies, which I used to zone out to after a ferocious night of partying. For those who loved the Velvet Underground's moments of chemically-soused grace ("Sunday Morning," "Jesus," "I'll Be Your Mirror") but wished for something without any coarse irony, El Perro del Mar has the non-denomenational praise you can't help but absorb.

It's kind of like -- and I don't mean this in any critical way -- a musical version of the Teletubbies, which I used to zone out to after a ferocious night of partying.

Free Electricity

ChrisB — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 03:40:49 +0000

8.2

http://www.sonicboomrecords.com/catalog/default.aspx?searchbox=free+electricity

The-Cops-free-electricity.jpg

I’ve now listened to The Cops’ second album, Free Electricity, about 7 or 8 times straight through over the past 4 days and I am no closer to figuring it out as I was after the first spin. My enjoyment of the album is unwavering, yet I find myself asking if I love this record because it’s a great record, or do I love it because it pushes the right buttons in my psyche? Regardless, it’s not every day that you find a record that simply knocks you on your ass – but that’s exactly what happened to this powerpop-loving writer.

Free Electricity celebrates everything I hold dear in rock and roll: dual-part, jerky guitars riffs layered upon a hard-hitting drum beat with a bassist who is not left many openings yet somehow finds them and dives the tempo by weaving in and out of the ones he’s given, and then add on a singer with a powerful voice and enough range to fit the dark mood of each song. Free Electricity rocks with an urgency not commonly found in indie rock today. In fact, it's hardly fair to call the Cops an indie rock band (with all due respect, the Arcade Fire doesn’t rock this hard and neither does Wilco). I prefer to say the Cops are a classic rock band that hasn’t become classic – yet. They are a throwback rock and roll band free of bullshit, like in the tradition of Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin, just with a garage-ier sound.

“Modern Black Flats” could be a generational anthem if it gets heard by enough people. I’m not sure if it is an update to the Clash’s “White Riot” or the Mekons’ “Never Been in a Riot” – albeit for an era where the stakes are considerably lower (or maybe the apathy is markedly higher). When frontman Michael Jaworski sings on the record’s catchiest song, “There’s blood on the sheets, Blood on the Tracks, blood on the walls of the modern black flats, blood on the seats of your Mercedes Benz” you can’t help but think he’s anxious for someone to throw a trashcan through the window of a Starbucks or commit some other act of anarchy just to shake up the status quo.

The last song, “N-99”, is my favorite. In it, Jaworski looks for some excitement in the seedier sections of Aurora Avenue (at least I think that's what it's about). He growls, “Take a ride with me up 99, make a right just past the neon sign, I got a hundred dollar bill, let’s have some fun, I’ve got a hundred dollar bill, let’s get it on.” Andrew Church’s basslines are understated but obvious – especially during the brief moments when they are layered below only Jaworski’s vocals. They drive the noir-ish feel of the number.

Listening to the Cops makes you realize that this band is more than the sum of its parts. Sure, there are great individual moments (Church’s aforementioned basslines on “N-99” or on the title track where you realize that David Weeks is a rare breed – a powerful drummer that is not in love with the sound of his own fills), but the Cops come together and find a common ideology and consistent sound.

If that, my friends, is not rock and roll, I don’t know what is.

It’s not everyday that you find a record that simply knocks you on your ass – but that’s exactly what happened to this powerpop-loving writer.