MUON
In Flught
[Wallwork]

by B Boy

Fresh from the sometimes Muon, sometimes Swilk, In Flught makes an impressive entrance with enthralling Paxian, its mix of Mogwai-lite and saccharine melody.

Even after a few spins, the first minute of glacial delay still has an air of sweet suspension, while the drums and bass slide in ever so slightly where you least expect. Unfortunately, the opening track of In Flught is also its peak. Muon's attempts at epic soundscaping fall somewhat flat in the determinedly tragic Persona non Grata, let down by its half-hearted vocals and semi-ethnic flute melody.

Maybe the fact that it summoned up images of Brad Pitt wearing a skirt and having a manly scuffle in Troy counted against it. The title track is decent enough, with the always lovely vocals of Ginette Chittick, though the drum crashes do get a bit too dramatic. Other standouts include the ambling, oh-so-sloppy country of Life and Erasure and the minimal but excellently executed drum and bass exercise of the aptly named Breaking Silences. The record is book ended by the fantastic Collapse, which manages to inject a genuine feeling of pathos and poignancy with its fractured but simple piano.

While far from perfect, the record didn't leave my CD player for more than a week; most of the attempts at high drama as well as occasional self indulgent noodling are mostly inoffensive, In Flught boasts some undeniably brilliant songs.

The Walkmen
Bows and Arrows
[Record Collection]

by K Vicious

With all the attention being funneled into the New York music scene these days, it’s easy for a band like the Walkmen to get lost in the mix of things. The band isn’t as glamorous as the Strokes, isn’t quite musically flamboyant as Interpol, isn’t as venomously iconic as TV For The Radio, and is definitely not as tacky as the Rapture. So much kudos to Hamilton Leithauser and his band for quietly going about their ways and delivering their sophomore release, Bows And Arrows.

Let’s just state from the outset that Bows And Arrows is a cult delight, continuing in the novel tradition of those galvanizing indie rock records that had came along through the foggy years since Seattle declared hardship. It’s clear that the Walkmen are aiming for something higher than their enjoyable 2002 debut Everybody Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone and the new songs sound like they’re dying for a John Cale production. The new record starts off with the drained choir sounds of What’s In It For Me, complete with the mourn of church organs, which then segues into The Rat’s boisterous rock-out, all clanging guitars and rattling drums (very U2 sounding, in fact).

And so your bullshit detector is on. Not a bad way to start, you think, with the obvious standout, only for the rest of the album to keep proving that the bold new sounds on The Rat are no fluke – Bows And Arrows rains with a lethal confidence and creative insurgence. Little House Of Savages laps it up, a perfect bash for the band to flaunt their impressive chemistry. What’s so unique about the new Walkmen is that they don’t even let up when they slip into the slower, piano-driven tracks: the crack balladry of Hang On Siobhan, with Leithauser exuding the whole of his slack-jawed charms; or the broken-mirror stupor on No Christmas While I’m Talking. This is a band attacking every damned song they have with fire and imagination: the result is a tight, cohesive and intense breakthrough album by a fledging band that will easily rank as one of this year’s best. And very quickly, 2004 may well turn out to be a banner year for these under-the-radar New York natives.

Bob Dylan
Live 1964: Concert At Philharmonic Hall, The Bootleg Series Volume 6
[Coumbia]

by K. Vicious

Trust Bob Dylan to be his customarily cryptic self of late, barking blues instead of singing tunes, making a self-serving movie called Masked And Anonymous and appearing in a Victoria’s Secret advertisement. Dylan fanatics out there are still waiting for a proper follow-up to 2001’s Love And Theft (one should note he churns out albums every four years these days), but the legendary songwriter is keeping everyone plenty busy by releasing his ‘rare’ or ‘unreleased’ material.

Through the years, Dylan has developed into a figure of mystique mainly because of the shroud of mystery over his infamous unreleased songs – a bunch of rejected numbers or some other mercurial performances. So if you are wondering why Bob Dylan’s legacy is now running out of secrets, then you could probably blame it all on Columbia Records’ ongoing, ‘official’ bootleg series. But it’s a good thing to get to hear these old stuff, right?

Live 1964 at Philharmonic Hall is number six in the (non-chronological) series and dates back to when Dylan was making his transition from a folk musician to embrace the hip quotient of electrified rock. For all purposes, this 1964 gig would have seem like a typical gathering of young, eager and adoring radicals expecting to hear his protest tunes. Joan Baez was still hanging around. But something new about Dylan’s songwriting was brewing, with or without his friends and fans knowing it, on that Halloween evening.

At that point, his rather whimsical new album Another Side Of Bob Dylan (1964) had only just been released – and his devoted fans already knew the songs pretty damned well – to signal his move towards freewheeling poetry. But Dylan even went a step further that night to preview material from his subsequent album of rock and roll shambles, Bringing It All Back Home (1964). How extraordinary an experience it must have been then for a fan to be there to witness Dylan finding his way around his new material, and to be standing there taking in the mindblowing lyrics (“The hollow horns plays wasted words/ Proves to warn that he not busy being born is busy dying”) of a song like his early incarnation here of the classic It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding.

I mentioned rare stuff: well, this 2-CD collection includes live readings of the then-controversial Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues (a leftist ‘protest song’, already appeared on volume 1), Silver Dagger (performed with Baez) and a randy version of If You Gotta Go, Go Now (also released on volume 1). Even better are his zippier performances of favorites like All I Really Wanna Do and I Don’t Believe You. It’s a shame that Dylan had to mar two of his best-written tunes, Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright and Mama You Been On My Mind, by hamming it up – perhaps he felt he needed by then to shy away from the intimate nature of the lyrics.

Or maybe he was just masquerading, as he joked during one of the interludes. This Philharmonic Hall concert reveals a side of Bob Dylan at his most inscrutable – sometimes earnest, sometimes playful, sometimes callous and cruel. But there is no mistaking his rebellious pose, and Dylan the performer at his electrifying best without yet immersing himself fully into rock and roll. In a few months from this concert, Dylan would harness the rebellion of his new creative voice onto Bringing It All Back Home, where his ties with the old-folkie crowd will be severed forever, and unapologetically, with the first clang of the electric guitar on Subterranean Homesick Blues. The rest, as they say, is mostly history.