Liz's Album of the Week, or "Step aside, Jonas Brothers."

I lack my husband's more eloquent critical writing style, but I decided that this album is good enough to warrant an "Album of the Week" post, and so here I am to tell you about it. (I'm still new at this music critic writing thing--I'm better with my hands/sound effects--so if I sound pretentious, I apologize in advance.) A friend of ours gave us this album the other night, telling us it was her brothers and that she'd like us to have it.

Let's be honest, when someone gives you a cd and says "This is someone I know," I always get slightly wary. But between AnnAlyse's friendship and the professional shrink-wrapped, hard plastic cd case, we decided it must be pretty good.

And we were right.

Combining youthful honesty with instrumental mastery, the Gibbons echo the light-hearted dynamics of artists like Jason Mraz, John Mayer, Ben Folds, and Jamie Lidell, and regional artists like Jordan Tait and Nik Day.
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Yeah. Did you guys hear that? They remind me of JASON MRAZ. And that's high praise...not the kind I hand out casually. This isn't just a few guys in a garage who wanted to record an album. These guys are a new love affair.

Here's why I love them. Because I love things that defy strict categorization. Their sound is a fusion of blues-rock, indie-pop, easy-listening, and funk-jazz. From the piano-driven melody of "What Can I Say" to the orchestral climax of the title song "More Than Air," they manage to maintain a defining "sound" while still exploring every inch of the dynamic they give themselves. They've got these GREAT funk lines that channel Steely Dan, but don't let that fool you. When it comes down to it, they can blow the blues like John Coltrane (like on the touching last song of the album, "Grandpa"). The upbeat "Where We Belong" makes me want to either dance, or create an awesome film/photo montage of people I love. "More Than Air" and "Gone" find me wandering down forgotten corridors of youthful regrets. Their cover of "I Saw The Light" has me driving around my old hometown on a warm summer night, when you're old enough to have freedom and young enough to use it delightfully foolishly.

And there's even a banjo. All an album needs to do to seduce me is to pick a banjo.

But all that aside, I love them because I can hear honesty in their music. Charlie Parker once said that "music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." I believe that. It's funny...so much of art is a "lie." Theatre/film is really just actors and effects, art isn't really that scene, but a representation of that scene. But to paraphrase the words of another great artist, "Art is a lie that makes us see the truth" (Pablo Picasso). The best art happens when the artist is fully invested in the message...when they're truly feeling the words, the lines, the notes, the colors. And I hear that in the Gibbons' album.

So stop reading. Go check out their album, already! They're available on iTunes and in a handful of Deseret Books stores, and you can hear samples of their music here.

Album Of The Week

Silverchair recorded their first major-lable album Frogstomp in 1995 when the bandmates were 15-year-olds, listening to lots of Nirvana. That album is grungy and crunchy and lacks pretty much anything beyond that---BUT it was an impressive accomplishment, considering. For the next two albums, young fans remained exuberant but no one else was much impressed, because--reflective of their age--Silverchair really hadn't found themselves yet.

Then 2002 gave birth to Diorama, an album where Silverchair aren't just changing themselves--they are rebuilding the universe. Their vision, while still including their core of guitar/bass/drums, now reaches into a world (literally) filled with oboes, trumpets, violas and harp-playing cherubim. Instead of frantic bludgeoning, they calm and subdue their instruments, as though petting a magical cat that grants wishes. Rather than their previous verse-chorus-verse connecting of dots, they now construct a well-watered hedge maze and fill it with sundry flora and fauna. They become gardeners, creators, growers and trusters in greater powers than themselves. That album cover up there? Perfectly conveys the magic that's bursting within.

Daniel Johns, the lead singer and sole songwriter of the trio, who sounded jagged and insanely defensive of his territory on previous albums, here embraces the whole world and smiles like the Dali Lama, unleashing waves of vocal honey as though filtering sunlight, igniting whatever it touches ("One Way Mule") or soothing it and making it dance ("Tuna In the Brine"). His vocals on this album are a parallel to the album itself--powerful, and yet so, so serene--a world away from where he's ever been seen before.

It sounds like a huge broadway production, the whole thing. While Diorama doesn't present itself as a concept album, it's clear that a story is being told in each song, each it's own additional scene to a compiling story. From the first 30 seconds of the opening track "Across the Night" to the final caravan of piano chords on closer "After All These Years," everything is fairly bursting with color and sweet sweet LIFE! Each song has such geography to it, striking unexpected chords, hitting more notes from opposite ends of the scale than most folks would.

It's funny: I don't think any of this is explaining what the music is like with any sort of accuracy. Have you wasted your time reading it? I don't think so. Because now you finally get a couple mp3's to listen to.

"Across the Night"

"Tuna In the Brine"

A toast!

"Diorama, here's to you! You are full of ambition and divine sparkle. Only creatures of aged wisdom or youthful delight could create a thing that reaches this kind of dynamic height. Which ones are they? I hope no one finds out." *long draught*

Album of the Week

"'Album of the Week'? Jacob, what does this mean?"

It's a new thing we'll be trying out on The Chapman Paper Sleeve. Each week I or my glorious wife will feature an album that we think is really cool. We'll tell you why it's cool, provide background info, upload some song clips, and raise our glass to offer a toast of high recommendation and goodwill to all men.

"What do you mean you'll be 'trying it out'?"

Well, it's possible that it will just end up being stupid instead of awesome. If that's the case, we'll discontinue it. We are on a quest of awesome, not stupid. Our goal is to be striving to do something cooler, better, and more in the tradition of a wild fiesta!

"Wonderful! Will there be free onion dip?"

What? No.

A lot of people got to know Regina Spektor for her 2006 album Begin To Hope (I did, at least), which is good because Begin To Hope is a gorgeous, darling piece of work. While it does bear her now-famous bizarrities, it's also very lush, very melodic, and very pleasantly pretty. Much of the time she is singing in the sunlight, with lots of bright colors beaming and cute little bows nestled like bluebirds in her hair. It isn't an oversimple, naive sunnyness, no---the lyrics are dagger-like in their sheerness, acerbic, sensual, which makes her music's heavy poignance often difficult for fans to explain. Spektor's balancing of these two elements is so foundational to her work that it is only once or twice on Begin To Hope that we hear something that is outrightly distressing, boiling over, plainly hot or plainly cold all the way through. ("Apres Moi", anybody?)

Soviet Kitsch, then, is a volcano. Still tuneful and pretty, but also more patently pained, disjointed, ponderous beyond belief. There are battles being fought everywhere---"Your Honor" is the loudest, most crunching, wailing song she's ever done, sounding riffwise like PJ Harvey---"Chemo Limo" is a harrowing 6-minute journey in a minor key, unraveling with a passion that outweighs the rest of her discography. Spektor's voice is more abrupt here, a vague rattle under her honey-smooth tones, and her LYRICS! Oh, this woman! On "Us", the word "statue" singles a person out ("statch-YOU"), while the word "contagious" unites it again ("contag-US"), making the song a tug-of-war of sorts; her plea to "break me to small parts" on "Ode to Divorce" makes her shouts of "out out out!" just previous feel like a physical beating ("ow! ow! ow!"); and the tales she tells us of other people's lives are wonderfully painted, as on "Chemo Limo" and with the man who met the Ghost of Corporate Future.

While much of her lyrics pass through travail, she explores the meaning of the heartbreak so thoroughly and carefully that she seems to have a reverence for it, respecting it's presence and waiting for it's changings. This album, maybe because of the knowing tone in her vocal delivery, feels like waiting---not strained or resigned, but a wait filled with understanding. And what is understood? I don't know.

Just under 40 minutes, it's worth sitting through the whole freaking thing. Every song is unique and worth mention, but I've carried on far too long. I offer a toast:

"Soviet Kitsch! You are wonderful! May your mirthful swaying and

wanderings through the wilderness teach you who you are and where

you want to be!" *swig*

TRACKLIST

01. Ode to Divorce

02. Poor Little Rich Boy

03. Carbon Minoxide

04. Flowers

05. Us

06. Sailor Song

07. * * *

08. Your Honor

09. The Ghost of Corporate Future

10. Chemo Limo

11. Somedays

LINKS

-- Another (better) review of an even earlier Regina Spektor album.

-- Buy Soviet Kitsch.

-- Regina Spektor online.