Inflight At Night

Made up of former and current members of Bottles and Skulls, Fleshies, Lower Forty-Eight and a drummer who is in too many other bands to list, San Francisco’s Triclops! are a veritable hybrid of the Bay Area underground punk/hardcore scene.

Triclops!’s “trademark” are their vocals, which for about half of Out Of Africa are run through broken solid state amps with a phaser explosion - achieving a sound that I can only describe as how the Mars Volta’s Cedric Bixler-Zavala would sound singing underwater. While slightly off-putting on first listen, the phasered vocals effects - delievered by Fleshies’ Johnny - become pretty aurally addictive over the course of the album, so much so that when the effect is not being used, I found myself anxiously awaiting it’s return.

Yes, basing songs upon classic literary works and-or their creators at first always seems pretentious, even ColinMeloyian, but hey, if it was good enough for the likes of Iron Maiden and David Axelrod who are we to disagree. Enter Bloomsbury, the new 4-song EP from Eagle Rock, CA’s own shaggy academes turned shaggy indie rockers, Princeton. All glib - borderline sarcastic introductions aside, Bloomsbury is well put together and accessible, surprisingly so when you consider the lyrical focus on early 20th century London intellectuals and the long list of instrumentation.

Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul is arguably one of Redding’s best albums, if not one of soul music’s best. It presents a cohesion beyond the usual collection of singles and b-sides common of the time, and it also set the stage for what would become his most recognizable and influential yet ultimately tragic song, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay”. In many ways Otis Blue is the last Otis Redding album, not technically as there’s his duet album with Carla Thomas and the posthumous Dock of The Bay, but in terms of an album that’s Otis through and through, not to mention proof of what could have been to come from the young Georgian, this is the one.

heav·y; Of great intensity, Having great power or force, Indulging to a great degree, Of great significance or profundity…

Not since the The Clash has a band’s name been as succinct and appropriate as The Heavy. These four guys and one gal hailing from the town of Bath (UK) have an arsenal of sweet baadasssss songs that transport you back to a time when blow was big, hair was bigger and Dracula was black. However you slice, dice, cut or sort it, their album Great Vengeance and Furious Fire, released in the UK last year and here in the states just a few weeks ago, is one goddamn heavy piece of work.

It can be an all-too-common occurrence for those whose musical tastes extend beyond, or completely avoid, commercial radio, that a band who one champions as underappreciated gets the recognition they deserve… but for the wrong album! And then subsequently tours ad nauseam until releasing another album to a fickle public who may or may not care anymore. Too many examples spring to mind, but my elitist and ultimately meaningless point is that while I was worried the same fate laid waiting for The Black Keys with 2006’s Magic Potion, I was thankfully wrong. It’s not that MP wasn’t a good album, it just wasn’t the album (see; Rubber Factory), but now with their latest release I can rest calmly with the assurance that The Black Keys’ (Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney) upward trajectory is analogous with the mastery that is Attack and Release.

First things first, I need to get it out of the way that I am squarely on The Raconteurs side of the fence when it comes to making a choice between which two Jack White projects I prefer. It is evidenced on the last Raconteurs release, Broken Boy Soldiers and this new release, The Consolers Of The Lonely that Jack White is much better when the spot light isn’t shining on him so brightly.