Crib Notes

Original release date:  Jan. 21, 2003

One-time Georgia boy and former Archers of Loaf frontman Eric Bachmann has a one-of-a-kind voice. On the best moments of Red Devil Dawn, the second album from Bachmann’s Crooked Fingers, his voice soothes like a sedated Tom Waits; on those few cringe-worthier ones he channels Cookie Monster on an oatmeal raisin binge. Thankfully, those latter moments come few and far between. Red Devil Dawn is one of those records which incongruously pairs music and lyrics to great effect — the instrumentation heard here is upbeat, lavish, even orchestral at times, but Bachmann’s lyrics serve to contrast. The sparse “Bad Man Coming” warns of some sort of impending doom, but manages to sound like a love song; “Big Darkness” prays for change in a dying “town where nothing moves,” where “even the vultures have moved on.”

Of course, Red Devil Dawn contains its fair share of actual love songs, and the better ones are simply outstanding. “You Can Never Leave,” despite its creepy title (what gives, Bachmann?), contains some beautiful lines. “You are no father’s daughter,” Bachmann croons. “No man has this much to offer.” And later, it becomes “You are fire, you are water/ When you dance, it is torture.” Further along in the album, though, that love turns to inevitable bitterness, and on the bouncy, horn-kissed “You Threw a Spark,” all that earlier adoration has become accusation and resentment. “So don’t you go claiming that I did you wrong,” Cookie Mon- er, Bachmann, spits, “When you were the one doing nothing at all.” (more…)

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BACK TO THE WEB: Released in 2006

For a band, consistency is one thing; being consistently dull, however, is quite another. The main reason a group like Radiohead is so universally revered seems to be their impeccable consistency. The band, in essence, becomes a brand — for the most part, we as listeners know what to expect, even if the formula is slightly tweaked from album to album. But you and I both know that Sam’s Choice Cola ain’t no Coke, and there of course exists a whole host of bands who spend the entirety of their middling careers bathed in mediocrity. Consistent, yes; exciting, nah.

I mention all this certainly not to equate Elf Power with store-brand soda pop. But the chief complaint lobbied against the Athens-based Elephant 6 stalwarts throughout their decade-plus career has been their neglect to push the ol’ proverbial envelope, their incredible averageness. I will admit this criticism isn’t entirely unfounded: take a listen to any one of their three or four albums of the early aughts and you could be forgiven for cursorily mistaking one for the other. But around 2004, some kind of rejuvenating lightning struck. That year’s Walking With the Beggar Boys displayed a band eager to rock and roll, and with its tightly-wound guitar licks it veered closer to Thin Lizzy than to any of the ’60s psychers to which Elf Power were initially so often (and rightfully) compared. (more…)

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Remember Deerhunter? Not the Deerhunter, mind you, of Brooklyn Vegan hype or Pitchfork Best New Music fame, and not the Spike Jonze/Trent Reznor-hanging Deerhunter, but Atlanta’s Deerhunter. Remember when they gigged tirelessly, I mean, all the damn time, at the Drunken Unicorn here in town, or at the sweaty, dank Caledonia Lounge over in Athens? Above all, do you remember Turn It Up Faggot? Yeah, the one with a Black Lips’ dick on the cover. Notoriously effusive frontman Bradford Cox would just as soon have you purge it from memory — he’s trashed the band’s grimy, lo-fi debut in interviews, citing, among other apparent pratfalls, the band’s musical immaturity at the time.

While it’s definitely true that the songs on Turn It Up Faggot lack a certain cohesiveness aptly displayed on Deerhunter’s following recordings (say what you will about Cox and his occasionally impish ways, the guy knows how to put an album together), there exists throughout the record a gnarled, raw sort of furor that is nowhere to be found on, say, Cryptograms. Chalk it up to artistic evolution, if you will — obviously, a band must grow, mature, change; if not, you’re Kiss. With all the best groups, though, there’s usually a good deal of intrigue, if not all-out enjoyment, to be found by examining and absorbing their earliest work. In this case, TIUF, ugly scabs and all, contains some revelatory stuff. (more…)

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