Wolf Colonel - Something/ Everything!
(K)
The Blow - Bonus Album
(K)
Jason Anderson's Wolf Colonel's third record is a conscious move away from the power-pop-band sound of their previous records. The album is an incredible collection of singer/songwriter type folk-pop and odd collaborations with a couple K luminaries (The Microphones'Phil Elvrum and Yume Bitsu's Adam Forkner), and of course, there are a few moments of Wolf Colonel's usual full band power-pop.
The album opens with a Revolver-esque lead, and starts things off on a triumphantly sweet pop song. The second track is less than a minute long, a snippet of a song. Just an acoustic guitar and singing with a keyboard that begins to swell just as the song finishes. Short as it may be, this kind of song is what makes this record so great. "One Thousand Ways" is among the standout tracks. It's one of the collaborative songs (with Phil Elvrum). The song begins with Jason singing and playing just an acoustic guitar, when for the last minute or so, layers of rumbling piano swell and overtake the lazy strumming. Obviously this is very much a Microphones-style trick, and when it's applied to such a great songwriter's song, it has an amazing effect. The next track is the collaboration with Adam Forkner. However, there isn't a blistering psychedelic guitar solo on this. Instead, Adam programmed a drum beat (much like the last song on The Golden Vessyl of Sound), which is layered with heavy, droning keyboards, and melancholy vocals (think Micromars).
Oddly enough, the new EP by The Blow has a cover of one of the songs from the new Wolf Colonel album. Khaela Maricech reworked the song, "Jet Ski Accidents." The Wolf Colonel version is one of my least favorite on the record, but the cover Khaela does is incredible. She translated the guitar part to a minimal keyboard part, and backs it with a drum machine that may or may not be a preset on a cheap keyboard. "The Moon is There, I Am Here" is a charming acoustic guitar song about the moon (a definite theme at K, with both The Microphones and Wolf Colonel having recently offered songs about it). Khaela lent her voice to The Microphones in the past, and here, Phil returns the favor by adding pounding percussion to "Watch the Water Roll Up," which gives the song the bouncing, off kilter sea-sickness that we love from The Microphones. Bonus Album suffers from a few songs that are just multi-tracked a capella, that don't make any impact. And, the last song, a tutorial for a dancing game (Phil and Calvin Johnson sing on it), may be kind of funny, but it's tough to listen to more than once.
Where The Blow may be charming though a little spotty, Jason Anderson has completely outdone himself, eclipsing all of his past recordings, with his cohesive and greatly varied collection of the different points of reference on his pop map.
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