Money’s Jamie Lee is certainly not a stranger to self-doubt. The band’s second album, Suicide Songs, wears it on its sleeve. Literally—the album cover is a picture of the band’s singer with a knife stabbing into his forehead, not to mention its overwrought title. But despite lyrics that reflect the Manchester native’s neuroses, the band’s work shows a confidence that outstrips any worries Lee or his mates may have about their own worth. They take an ambitious swing, and it pays off.

Money had a debut album in 2013 that did an impressive job of sounding as epic as an indie band of Money’s stature (and, *ahem*, with their lack of actual money) could. They sounded like a normal-sized band with the kind and amount of instruments fledgling indie rock bands normally get their hands on, playing them with a bunch of studio tricks to make them sound bigger and more momentous than they are. They fit into a trend that’s not uncommon but definitely not unfortunate—rock bands that use digital studios and artificial reverb to create a wall of sound instead of through the cramped recording style that Phil Spector and other analog wizards worked hard to make.

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Written by Jon Hecht

There’s a passage at the end of legendary rock critic Lester Bangs’ 1977 Elvis obituary in The Village Voice, “Where Were You When Elvis Died?” that always comes into my head when I see the outpouring of love from friends and critics and strangers after the death of a truly Great artist.

“If love truly is going out of fashion forever, which I do not believe, then along with our nurtured indifference to each other will be an even more contemptuous indifference to each others’ objects of reverence. I thought it was Iggy Stooge, you thought it was Joni Mitchell or whoever else seemed to speak for your own private, entirely circumscribed situation’s many pains and few ecstasies. We will continue to fragment in this manner, because solipsism holds all the cards at present; it is a king whose domain engulfs even Elvis’s. But I can guarantee you one thing: we will never again agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. So I won’t bother saying good-bye to his corpse. I will say good-bye to you.”

I don’t think Bangs was right, after all. One could just as easily have written an essay entitled “Where Were You When Michael Jackson Died?” or written the sentence “We will never agree on anything as we agreed on Robin Williams.” And now, I can see it happening again with one of my all-time favorite musicians, David Bowie.

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Our writer, Jon Hecht, has put together a list of his top albums of 2015 - featuring albums from Kendrick Lamar, Neon Indian, and HEALTH among others. Check out his full list below!

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HEALTH
Saturday, November 21, 2015
Music Hall of Williamsburg; Brooklyn, NY
Written by Jon Hecht

What does it take to fill a room with music?

A good publicist can fill it with people, and good equipment can fill it with noise—loud, aching noise, that bubbles up from your toes and into your ribs; epic, unsettling noise that you hear in your tongue and your skull just as much as your ears; angry, throbbing noise that passes right through you and disturbs the air behind your body. But there’s more to it than that.

The crowd at HEALTH was into it. They danced. They screamed and cheered. They let the synthetic feedback being pumped at unholy decibel levels from the amplifiers on the stage move through them. They did what a crowd does at a really good show. They turned the noise coming out of the speakers into music.

HEALTH is a band that understands noise. They come from years of playing it. They started with guitar feedback and screeches, experimenting with getting rid of songs and all the things that normally turn collections of sounds into “music.” They fell into a category of early-aughts experimental music that made them comparable to Black Dice and Battles, that seemingly thought that the problem with “noise-rock” heroes like Sonic Youth or My Bloody Valentine was that pesky rock getting in the way of the screeching.*

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Blues music is boring. I love it, but that’s kind of the point, right? It’s crazy that there’s a genre of music where such a big part of the sound is defined by a certain chord progression and a specific scale. It’s among the oldest of American music traditions, and somehow we’re still interested in this down-and-dirty simple ditty that dates back to the early nineteenth century.

But of course, it’s this consistency that has made blues so wonderful. The thump works just as well as the stomp, and allows these little changes to shine through as tectonic shifts that feel revolutionary. Blues-rock was never that big of an innovation, but rock and roll has continued to be influenced by the power of Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton for decades. The Black Keys added Danger Mouse as a producer in 2008, and the shiny-but-distorted sound of Brothers has become the sound of not just recent blues, but half of popular modern rock since.

All this talk about the seminal moments of the blues is probably setting up Courtesy Tier, the New York City threesome that release their first EP, Little Rock on November 6, a little too strongly. This is the first EP by a band that, like the aforementioned half of modern rock bands, sound a lot like the Black Keys. They have crunchy rhythm guitars, wailing lead guitars, drums with lots of hi-hats and great little fills at the end of every measure and bass that has a little extra feedback on it to give it a real thud.

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Folk music has always been predicated on a dream. It’s the music of a past that maybe was played by people who didn’t live through it. When the chords are plucked for twang and you get a good ol’ hometown wail out of a voice box that just shot back some terrible bourbon, the dream can invade your waking moments and become beautiful. For a second it feels as real as it wants to be.

Jeremiah Tall looks like a white, flannel-garbed Reggie Watts, and he sounds like the loudest guy at a Brooklyn beer garden. He’s a man who was named for this destiny, and he sings along to music he created with his whole body. He strums a banjo with a jangle, beats a suit-case with kick-drum pedal, and somehow fits a tambourine onto a limb I’m not certain of. His one-man band fills up the studio, and the dream becomes vivid. He has a debut album called Where The Lore Began, which is a perfect bullseye on the nose.

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[Note: In the midst of allegations made against a former member of Neck Deep in regards to unlawful interactions with underage fans, we would like to state that neither Lucy Out Loud nor members of its staff condone any sort of actions of that nature. This review was aimed to focus on the band and on the album’s merit, though we deemed it irresponsible to make no mention of the aforementioned issues. The band’s official statement on the situation can be read here. Thank you.]

Punk doesn’t do intros.*

It’s supposed to start mid-chorus. There’s no clearing of throat, because the best punk singers have the scratchiest of screeching vocal chords anyway. You just start in the middle, and don’t worry if the listener has time to get acclimated. They’re pulled along, and they’re with you, or they’re against you.

British pop-punkers Neck Deep know this. They know all the lessons that Punk has been teaching us. They’ve got a few seconds of record studio leftovers, and we’re in, on the opener of their new album, “Citizens of Earth.” A few hard-hitting eighth notes that rise in intensity and before long we’re in the album, and singer Ben Barlow is telling us how “every earthquake starts with a little shake.”

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A debut EP is basically a gimme, right? When studio time is being doled by a salt shaker, the idea of coming up with any sound that’s better than “competent” can seem unfair. The things that make a band matter—all that junk about a specific sound that no one else has, and an energy and delivery that makes it work perfectly is probably best judged once there’s a full album, when being in the studio isn’t quite as much of a luxury.

So it’s especially impressive to listen to Marco With Love, who apparently is a guy named Marco and his band named Love. Last year they released the kind of first single, also titled “Love,” that does exactly what it needs to. With a mix of 60s-reminiscent jangle pop guitars that prove the band is living up to their namesake, a smooth rhythm section that sounds much more modern, and an earnest gruff vocalist, it’s got good style and tight song craft that should make anyone curious for a full EP. There’s enough confidence and freshness in this lead single that an entire five songs rehashing it could have easily been an okay start. Which is why MWL’s Tidal Wave EP is so weird, and more importantly, good.

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Andrew “Koji” Shiraki is a pretty solid songwriter. He’s got good hooks, interesting lyrics and a voice that is distinctive without being annoying. And most of all, he’s able to use all of those features well with a style that fits him. A little acoustic, but not too much. A bunch of pretty instruments—bells and the like—that would fit well in a magical forest, and a stripped down rawness that stops that from getting too twee. It sounds like it’s recorded one summer evening in a barn, in all the best ways–old oak, fireflies, and old friends–except with enough of a punk sensibility to stay energized and angry through the sap.

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4Knots Festival
Pier 84, New York NY
July 11, 2015

It’s summer. Have you noticed? You can tell because it’s hot out. I usually feel that this is the time of the year for classic rock and old-school hip hop. Y’know, barbecue stuff.

What I don’t usually think of is Indie rock. It’s more of a winter-y music to me, introverted stuff for staying inside and thinking about how sad you are with your overwrought feelings. When the sky is blue and even people like me (choosing to live in a city with public transportation so I don’t have to drive) fantasize about bumping up the speakers on an open-topped car, there seems like no good reason for the warm blankets of guitar fuzz. Why mumble your lyrics when you can shout them at the top of your lungs?

That being said, it’s an impressive feat of the Village Voice in putting together a festival worthy of Indie rock bands that exemplify summer in the best way. Youthful energy, fast guitars, and poppy melodies combined to create a sound that I would refer to as “surf-rock” if it seemed like any of the people onstage in their ripped jeans and introverted stances had ever surfed in their lives.

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