TICKLEY FEATHER
Tickley Feather
PAW22
Paw Tracks 2008
20 Tracks. 33mins53secs

Parenting has never been the sort of topic that easily lends itself to good music. In fact, it’s often the sort of thing that comes around when a musician leaves behind a rock and roll soaked youth as they approach quieter, less turbulent – less musically interesting – times. That at least is one way of looking at things.

Annie Sachs, though, a single mother and the woman behind Tickley Feather – the latest addition to the Paw Tracks roster – is with this album taking an entirely different tack altogether. Putting together an assortment of Casio-crafted four-tracks during late nights spent at home with her young son, with this debut she holds up a weird, distorted mirror on the world of raising children. Lonely and innocent in equal measure, the album could be about anything, so hard to unpick are the half-whispered lyrics, but the sense of an artist working at the margins is undeniable. Continue Reading »

EXCEPTER
Debt Dept
PAW21
Paw Tracks 2008
08 Tracks. 43 mins 48secs

Normally, urging the listener to “kill people” repeatedly on record would lead to scores of scaremongering splashes in the national press about the latest antichrists of the music scene. That Excepter have so far escaped this fate is probably down partly to their relative obscurity when compared with other musical bete noires. Yet although the shrieking editorial writers may yet have come to notice them, the band have been beguiling and infuriating music fans for years with their off-kilter anti-pop insanity. This, their fourth release, will probably divide listeners as much as the others, but it offers some pretty perverse pleasures to those who can stomach the ride.

To imagine what this band sounds like, picture yourself walking into a music store with sections devoted to different musical genres. Continue Reading »

AVEY TARE & KRÍA BREKKAN
Pullhair Rubeye
PAW015
Paw Tracks 2007
08 Tracks. 31mins33secs

In 1975, Lou Reed, already established as the hippest rock star of his time, released a double-album of atonal, feedback-drenched, amelodic noise, entitled Metal Machine Music. In the years since, the reasons behind the creation and release of the album continue to be heavily debated: was he trying to escape a record contract? Did he wish to alienate his audience? Or was he just trying something new, and screw what the teenyboppers thought? In time, MMM became a genesis record for noise musicians who, unlike most listeners and critics at the time, actually took it seriously.

Now it’s 2007. The music landscape is different from 1975, but in many ways it’s also the same; this is to say, an artist really going out there and experimenting – as innocent as it may be in intention – can still shock and upset its core audience, no matter how open-minded they were thought to be. Continue Reading »

PANDA BEAR
Person Pitch
PAW14
Paw Tracks 2007
07 Tracks. 45mins49secs

Person Pitch, Panda Bear’s third solo album, is a rather more luxurious and vibrant affair than its predecessors. While his 1997 eponymous lo-fi debut refused to decide between Casio-style knob tweaking and folk songs, its follow up, Young Prayer, released in 2004, dedicated to his recently deceased father, was much more sombre and atmospheric. In the last year, Panda Bear, real name Noah Lennox, got married, became a father and moved to Lisbon, where the album was recorded. On this latest opus, he lets loose and assembles a magnificent collection of uplifting and gently psychedelic avant pop. Continue Reading »

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
People
12FAT060 / CDFAT060
Fat-Cat Records 2006
04 Tracks. 18mins55secs

Although coming out over a year after Animal Collective’s enchanting Feels, three of the four songs featured on this EP, People, Tikwid and My Favorite Colors, were actually recorded during the same sessions. A slow-burning piece which builds up over its entire course, the title track shares more than a few common genes with songs like Banshee Beat or Loch Raven. Yet, as words are replaced with incantations and strummed drones seem to materialise, People recalls some of the band’s compositions circa Here Comes The Indian. Continue Reading »

PANDA BEAR
Bro’s
12FAT059
Fat-Cat Records 2006
02 Tracks. 17mins47secs

Panda Bear brought the Fat-Cat 2006 release schedule to a close with his solo debut for the label, Bro’s, so it was only fair that Animal Collective would lead the Cat’s 2007 parade with their latest offering. Both come only weeks after Paw Tracks re-released the band’s rare live album Hollinndagain.

Of these two releases, Panda Bear’s is definitely the most inspiring. Coming ahead of a split twelve inch with Excepter and his third solo album, both due on Paw Tracks, and recorded last year in Noah Lennox’s home in Lisbon, this EP features two versions of the title track. Continue Reading »