Mesa Verde-The Old Road

The fusion of screamo and post-rock has created some truly depressing albums. City of Caterpillar's self-titled and Circle Takes the Square's violent masterpiece As the Roots Undo come to mind, especially. But none of them quite act as the literal soundscape for hopelessness and despair as Mesa Verde's album The Old Road. And what neither of the aforementioned albums manage to capture which The Old Road does perfectly is the unmistakable beauty that can be found in a proclamation of such sadness.

While post-rock/screamo has become formulaic within the genre over the last decade, Mesa Verde make the combination work to the best possible effect. The opener "A Deep Sleep Without Dreams" is a pure instrumental piece which jumps back and forth from a sort of metallic shoegaze to the fast octave riffing of hardcore. "For the Tree that Fell" then launches into a more typical modern hardcore sound, with chaotic guitars combined with frantic vocals. The album truly launches its sound, however, when the song lurches to a halt and quavering vocals sing a few strained lines over clean, reverb-soaked guitars. It's a stunning moment of self-realization for the band, and unveils the true beauty of The Old Road's sound- a gloomy yet gorgeous blend of chaos and softness that sucks you into its prevailing mood of despair.

Each of the songs on The Old Road have that kind of pivotal moment that makes each of them special, whether it's the reprising guitar line on "When the Canary Dies" or the soaring, triumphant guitar climax of "Return to Victories" which makes its appearance after a long interlude of clean guitars and softly chanted vocals. The real centerpiece of the album, however, is the 13-minute closer, "Post-youth". While it starts fairly typically, constructing a complex structure of fast riffs and violent screams, at exactly the halfway point it completely collapses upon itself and a lone guitar line emerges from the noise, playing a dominating, gloomy melody while the vocalist chants "one day my dreams will meet my fears..". This continues for a time, with various guitar parts being added on top of the existing one, and with the tempo increasing until the song explodes in a moment of catharsis as beautiful as it is tear-jerkingly sad. It's one of the most powerful expressions of human depression of the last decade, and by itself makes the album absolutely essential to hear.

The Old Road is one of the last truly classic albums of a fading genre, a monument to everything that made screamo great and a nod to the sounds that began to influence it later in its life, like shoegaze and post-rock. Above all, The Old Road is a wonderful, concise piece of music that seems to pass much more quickly than its 35-minute running time. If you had any doubts about the quality of modern hardcore, let The Old Road be their burial place, and the gateway into a fantastic, under-appreciated genre.

http://www.myspace.com/mesaverde

Parades-Foreign Tapes

Parades are the quintessential "new band" to check out from 2010. Not only do they present a fresh yet coherent sound which helps them stand out from the masses of fledgling bands, they do so in a way that I cannot imagine anyone who enjoys music having a problem with theirs. Parades' debut is instantly lovable, in the very best way.

The elements that make Foreign Tapes so good are not in themselves a highlight. The subtle horns in "Hunters" don't stand out enough to define the song beyond the gorgeous melodies and gentle piano chords. Likewise, reverb-laden guitars in "Marigold" and "Past Lives" don't make one think "Oh, that's kind of post-rock-y", even though the influences from that genre are obvious. The real core of Foreign Tapes is the seamless flow of the album from song to song, from dreamy pop numbers to more ambitious indie rock songs to somber instrumentals.

That's not to say the technical details on Foreign Tapes aren't fantastic. The vocals are a defining factor, a male-female trade-off which is as angelic as it is dynamic. The production is also impeccably good, with the loud drums giving the album a decidedly upbeat feel, even on the slower tracks. The instrumentation is incredibly tactful and layered, leading one to believe that this debut album was born from no small amount of blood, sweat, and tears.

The whole of Foreign Tapes is really much greater than the sum of its parts, though. The album ebbs and flows in a masterful fashion, displaying the restraint and songwriting prowess of a band far beyond its debut album. The mood of Foreign Tapes is perfect, creating a sort of dreamscape that is sometimes melancholy, sometimes uplifting, but never overbearing in either extreme. Parades have absolutely nailed it on their first try, and have established themselves in one fell swoop as one of the giants of the indie genre. A must-listen.

Listen and buy:

http://www.myspace.com/parades

Lights Out Asia-In the Days of Jupiter

Lights Out Asia's 2008 album "Eyes Like Brontide" was a breath of fresh air in the stagnant, dying genre of post-rock. Instead of doing their best to emulate genre monoliths like Godspeed You! Black Emperor or Explosions in the Sky, Lights Out Asia combined light post-rock guitar motifs with gentle electronica and brooding ambiance, creating something entirely their own. But the main strength of "Eyes Like Brontide" was not its originality, but its vibrance and constant grip on the listener's attention, a huge step away from the laborious build-ups and sweeping song structures of their contemporaries. When I heard the early samples of "In the Days of Jupiter", I was concerned that Lights Out Asia would be taking a step too far into the ambient direction, forsaking their interesting qualities for something less accessible. Fortunately, Lights Out Asia have pleasantly surprised me.

While "In the Days of Jupiter" doesn't have the same coherent theme of "Eyes Like Brontide" (Cold War era paranoia and suspicion), it still manages to tie its eleven quietly simmering tracks together by referencing space via song titles and overall sound. The opening suite of the first three songs seems to be about a journey to Europa, the first two entries symbolizing the slow drift through space with the album's new emphasis on piano and the group's trademark electronic ambiance. But it's not until 13 AM that "In the Days of Jupiter" truly begins to show the band's progress from their last effort. What begins as another lonely space song evolves into a constantly changing, brilliant song highlighted by Chris Schafer's distant, heavenly voice and wrapped up beautifully by a tactful post-rock explosion.

From that point on, the album seems to make it more and more apparent that this isn't Benn Jordan's "Pale Blue Dot", with experimental tracks such as "Then I Hope You Like the Desert" with its poppy-sounding vocal anthems, or "Shifting Sands Sink Ship"s glacial string arrangements. Rather than glaze the listener's eyes over with poorly structured ambient build-ups, Lights Out Asia continue to do what sets them apart from other post-rock giants; they keep the listener engaged by adding interesting arrangements, sounds, and hooks with impeccable timing in each of the eleven tracks. A chord change or a fade-in guitar or a piano melody is all the album needs to capture your attention and suck you into its gorgeous soundscapes depicting the peaceful space voyages like the one on the album's cover.

Lights Out Asia is a must-listen for anyone either looking for some very chill music or to those bored with the sparse pickings post-rock has had to offer over the last five years. Either way, I have yet another soundtrack for stargazing or browsing astronomy pictures.

Listen: 13 AM

The Flashbulb-Arboreal

On Soundtrack To a Vacant Life, Benn Jordan used his voice on three of its last.fm-destroying 31 tracks. And when he did sing, it was soft, timid, and insecure, perfectly capturing the heartache and nostalgia captured by that album. On Arboreal, Jordan's voice is present on five or six tracks, and on a few it comes triumphantly to the forefront to rob the guitar and piano of their melodic leadership and bring the song to a focal point.

I say this because, like on Soundtrack, Benn Jordan's voice is once again a function for the album as a whole: loud, abrupt, and sometimes abrasive, but never less than fantastic. Arboreal opens with the enchanting "Undiscovered Colors", but leaps into a full five tracks of loud, melodic electronica that doesn't let up until "Dread, Etched in Snow", a signature Flashbulb piano track. And from there, The Flashbulb continues with the same uncanny consistency and emotional power featured on Jordan's previous work, albeit with a darker, more drawn-out edge.

If nothing else, Arboreal is a summary of Benn Jordan's entire back catalogue. The idm influences return proudly to the forefront on much of the album, and spacey ambient passages from Pale Blue Dot make their appearances. On "Dreaming Renewal", Benn Jordan joins Bon Iver in proving that autotune can become an artistic instrument rather than a crutch. On the aptly titled "The Great Pumpkin Tapes", a jazzy guitar track meets gentle piano and wouldn't sound out of place in the cartoon for which it is named. And on the landmark "Skeletons", clocking in at over six minutes, Jordan focuses all the creative energy scattered haphazardly over 31 tracks of his previous album into one piece, with a vocal build-up, the loudest moment on the album, and a tear-jerking piano outro.

The bipolar artist behind The Flashbulb is the same one on Arboreal that most of us met in Soundtrack To A Vacant Life. The emotional punch is still there, striking the listener with jaw-dropping melodies at every turn and making unexpected musical detours through multiple sounds. But Arboreal is a maturation of that same sound, a natural development and a culmination of influences into what feels like one giant setpiece. It may not be as landmark, but it certainly is no less fantastic.

Buy It

Hear It: Dragging Afloat