THE DANDY WARHOLS/GREAT LAKE SWIMMERS/THE MARS VOLTA

Alternative notions: The Dandy Warhols, Great Lake Swimmers, and the Mars Volta

By: MATT ASHARE |
Published: April 04, 2012 http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2012/apr/04/alternative-notions-dandy-warhols-great-lake-swimm-ar-1816921/

The Dandy Warhols, This Machine (The End)

Great Lake Swimmers, New Wild Everywhere (Nettwerk)

The Mars Volta, Noctourniquet (Warner Bros.)

MEASURED MELANCHOLY: Great Lake Swimmers know the art of subtlety

If you're looking at music through, say, the lens of the Grammys, then you're likely to have one particular, somewhat narrow, yet perfectly acceptable view of what's going on. In the wake of this year's annual red-carpeted smoochfest, that perspective might best be summed up in one word: Adele. But, over the last decade and a half, the proliferation of digital downloading, nifty little iPhone apps, and user-friendly soundclouds has helped to create and sustain an increasing number of niche markets for all kinds of artists who, more often than not, swarm under the mainstream radar, if, indeed, something that could properly be called a "mainstream" still exists.

            There used to be easy designations for much of this music — indie, alternative, post-punk, neo-punk, emo-punk, anti-folk, and just plain "alternative." But even that imperfect system has essentially broken down. At this point, perhaps the only reasonable way to make sense of artists who thrive somewhere in that gray area between obscurity and international fame — bands like Oregon's art-damaged Dandy Warhols, Canadian Americana enthusiasts Great Lake Swimmers, and the El Paso-bred prog-punk juggernaut that is the Mars Volta — is simply to accept that they're all alternatives to one another, each with their own compelling approach to fashioning something unique out of scattered scraps of the past, as all three demonstrate on their latest releases. 

The Dandy Warhols emerged out of Portland as something of an alt-rock one-hit wonder in the mid-’90s. Unfortunately, the hipster anti-anthem "Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth" (from the 1997 album …The Dandy Warhols Come Down), which, for all of its raging psychedelic guitar slinging, was the wrong hit. It would have been much cooler if their sardonic spot-on Velvet Underground homage, "(Tony This Song Is Called) Lou Weed" (from their ’95 debut Dandys Rule OK), had found a place on alternative radio. Maybe then the band would have stuck to their garage-rock guns instead of going out on a thin, neo-new wave limb with 2003's Welcome to the Monkey House, an album produced by Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran infamy.

            Except for an odd 2004 rockumentary that chronicled the contentious relationship between the Dandys and a garage-rocking trainwreck known as the Brian Jonestown Massacre (it actually won the documentary grand jury prize at Sundance that year), I pretty much lost track of the band after Monkey House. But frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor, guitarist Peter Holmström, keyboardist Zia McCabe, and drummer Brent Deboer have stuck together, plugging steadily away in their aptly named Odditorium studio, vacillating between synth-pop silliness and the serrated churn of grungy guitars.

Their new This Machine finds them somewhere in the vicinity of a rockist comfort zone, even if they’re still not above dabbling in a little electro-fuzz nonsense here, there, and especially on the track “Alternative Power To the People.” Goth god David J of Love and Rockets fame transports himself from the ’80s to lend his voice and guidance to the dark-toned, yet playful “The Autumn Carnival.” But the Dandys are still at their best when they’re waxing wryly nostalgic on a tune like “Enjoy Yourself,” where Taylor-Taylor puts his best Iggy Pop impersonation up against a thick guitar hook and celebrates the art of simply having a good time.

Great Lake Swimers found their comfort zone — plaintive, pastoral, poetic soundscapes — straight outta the gate on their 2003 self-titled debut. And they haven’t left it since. If anything, singer/guitarist Tony Dekker has consolidated his considerable songwriting talents as the band have grown from a spare trio, who fell somewhere between the wistful airiness of Cowboy Junkies and the hushed jangle of early R.E.M., to a more outwardly rootsy fivesome featuring Erik Arnesen on banjo and guitar, the violin and background vocals of Miranda Mulholland, Bret Higgins on standup bass, and drummer Greg Millson. The band’s latest offering, New Wild Everywhere, also features a full complement of guest musicians, adding keyboards, vibraphone, flugelhorn, pedal steel, mandolin, and a whole bunch of strings to the mix.

            Subtlety is Dekker’s stock in trade. He’s a master of measured melancholy, of peaceful uneasy feelings, of the less-is-more aesthetic. He deploys the additional instrumentalists fairly sparingly, accentuating the band’s ethereal hooks and mournful melodies without getting overly ornamental. “Think That You Might Be Wrong,” a skeletal blues, may be the most polite kiss off to an ex-lover that I’ve ever heard. “Well, you’re larger than life,” Dekker admits in a near whisper before offering the quiet qualification, “When the lighting is right.” The disc’s title track finds Dekker on rockier ground, with a solid backbeat and growling guitar buoying his naturalist musings.

Dekker has a gift for finding solace in sadness and a preference for the “wide open spaces” he explores in “The Great Exhale.” But he’s equally adept at marrying memorable melodies to social commentary, as he does in “Easy Come Easy Go,” an upbeat tune that addresses the economic downturn, and “Ballad of a Fisherman’s Wife,” a poignant yet pointed survey of BP oil spill that carries pleasant echoes of Woody Guthrie at his best.

The Greek Myth of Hyacinthus, Superman’s arch-rival Solomon Grundy, and the ’80s Brit band the Godfathers are all, apparently, part of the narrative behind Noctourniquet, the latest missive from the wacky dudes behind starship Mars Volta, a hard-rocking screamo fivesome who reside somewhere between the elves of Middle Earth and the cylons of New Caprica. Only the second part of that equation is meant as a joke. The first part — Hyacinthus, Grundy, and the Godfathers — is straight out of the Mars Volta playbook. Powered by the ambitious songwriting and out-there vision of guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala, the band have been reviving the lost art of prog-rock obscuritanism (think Uriah Heep or deep Zeppelin cuts like “Achilles Last Stand” and you’ll be in the ballpark) since they embarked on their journey in 2001. Hell, they even got themselves a Grammy three years ago (Best Hard Rock performance for the song “Wax Simulacra).

This time, however, they may have outdone themselves with an album that’s primary conceptual motif might best be described as a nervous breakdown in 13 parts. I tend to prefer the Volta guys more when they’re copping Zeppelin riffs. It’s something they’ve done to great effect in the past, and it’s a lot harder than it may seem. But Noctourniquet, with its typically cryptic song titles (“Vedamalady,” “Molochwalker,” and “Lapochka” are three I resorted to Wikipedia to decipher) and lyrics like “convalesce your fetish in me,” goes well beyond classic-rock revivals to incorporate quite a bit of digital studio manipulation and electronic gadgetry. On the downside, the results tend to override the band’s guitar wizardry and downplay the impact of Bixler-Zavala’s Plantian wail — two of the band’s greatest assets. On the upside, the Mars Volta appear to have created yet another new subgenre: electro-prog-punk.