Best-Ofs: LEO critics tout their Top 5

1) Wax Fang "La La Land" (Don't Panic) — The exciting disc by the exciting band is now available for everyone to discover. I’m talking to you, scouts at Sub Pop or Merge or whomever else can help this trio spread their sound around the world. (We still owe the world a giant apology for Days of the New, anyway.)

2) Radiohead "In Rainbows" (Radiohead) — For the first time in 10 years, they play to their strengths — a bunch of really good songs, played extremely well.

3) "You’re Gonna Miss Me: A Film About Roky Erickson" (Palm Pictures) — I don’t know why Daniel Johnston gets more lip service from the kids today (Is Kurt Cobain’s influence really still felt? Or is it Bright Eyes now?). Roky was and still is the much more musical, fascinating Texan crazy freak. You don’t love him yet? Watch this inspiring, bewildering story unfold.

4) Battles "Mirrored" (Warp) — Older and younger dudes joining forces, melding heavy rock and weird electronics. It shouldn’t work but it does, uniting trendy girls who just wanna have fun and awkward guys with no social skills who want the girls to appreciate how smart they are, god damn it.

5) Marissa Nadler "Songs III: Bird on the Water" (Kemado) — Suddenly elvish girls who do the opposite of rock are everywhere, and most have already been sent back to their local Ren Fair. Marissa Nadler pulls off sounding ancient and modern simultaneously, can compose songs that offer lovely substance over hip attitude, and can even cover a Leonard Cohen song without embarrassing herself.


C. 2007 LEO Weekly

Merle Haggard

The Bluegrass Sessions
(McCoury)

Plenty today pay lip service to Johnny & Hank and ask, “Why can’t nobody do it like they used to?” Yet the same people can’t be bothered to keep up with the likes of Merle Haggard, unless he’s being promoted by a punk rock label.
Perhaps Hag himself is partly to blame: He releases a new one annually, like Neil Young or Woody Allen, though he’s more consistent. He might not reach as high, but you can be sure that he’ll never collaborate with Madonna or go crazy with robots.

Here, he revisits old songs, sings some new ones, and finds himself unable to stay within the strict parameters of bluegrass regulations, in the best way.
Willie Nelson might have proven to be more versatile (ever hear his reggae disc?), but Haggard keeps returning as the most emotionally and instinctually awake songwriter left amongst what used to be called country music.

c. 2007 LEO Weekly

Tiny Vipers

Hands Across the Void
(Sub Pop)

Sub Pop’s website helpfully describes this album by Seattle-based singer and guitarist Jesy Fortino as Tiny Vipers as “acoustic/goth.”
Fortino is a guitarist seemingly more inspired by the ambient textures of John Fahey and British psych influences that have inspired fellow “goths” Current 93, than by anyone else more interested in catchy pop hooks.

Without any other musicians around, there is a constant sparseness to the songs on Void that can often leave one wanting more. Perhaps, for example, a more pleasing voice to help make the crazy go down easier. Fortino’s voice is similar to, but not as horrifyingly atonal — sorry, “artful” — as Joanna Newsom’s. When she stumbles onto a catchy verse, in the song “Swastika,” no less, it goes away quickly.
In an 11-minute song performed by her alone (could she be a Jandek fan?), it requires more patience than usual. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course. Except when it is.

c. 2007 LEO Weekly

"Louisville Babylon 2"

Louisville Babylon 2
(Louisville Is for Lovers)

In high school in Florida in the 1990's, my (few) friends and I had what we thought was a secret love - the comically over-the-top, doo wop-inflected horror punk of a band from New Jersey who had broken up before they got too boring or, worse, popular. What we didn't know then, in those awkward days between the fall of Communism and the mainstreaming of the internet, was that the Misfits were a secret shared by kids everywhere.

Up in Louisville, a 1994 Misfits tribute was lovingly complied and now, 13 years later, the new generation is at it. The new versions of old favorites range from hillbilly to goth synths to preppy pop. While it's interesting to hear My Morning Jacket reduced to a too-reverential copycat, the collection peaks when Ronnie Mack and Ponty's Camper put some Kentucky on 'em, and Dave Pajo and Wax Fang slow 'em down like 30-somethings should.

C. 2007 LEO Weekly