Westy Gets Mail #4
Sexton Blake, Damiera, Dear and the Headlights
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Plays the Hits!
I'm not sure where to go with this one. On one hand, it's a pretty pleasant listen for one of those home-recorded one-man band things, of which let me tell you I hear a lot and few are ever even bearable. But on the other hand, it's a cover album. Yeah. A cover album, by some guy you nor I nor hardly anybody who isn't an Oregon scenester has ever heard of. I don't think the best way for Sexton Blake (real name Josh Hodges) to make an impression outside of his hometown is with a bunch of 80's covers, unless he sees his career path inevitably leading to work as a wedding singer. It's dangerous really to put one cover on your album when you're just trying to earn a national profile, and if there is a pattern to this selection of tunes (which includes some fun if uninspired spins on Springsteen, Erasure, and ELO hits in addition to a bunch of novelties like Milli Vanilli and Paula Abdul songs and "Bette Davis Eyes") it eludes me.
The problem with what "Blake" has done here is that there's nothing on Plays the Hits! that gives us any incentive to dig deeper. The song choices are so obvious that if you replaced Hodges with the original artists it could be a Time-Life CD and the closet-y, drum machine-and-double-tracked-vocal arrangements don't distinguish the musician very much as an interpreter of others' songs. On the only track from the entire collection that doesn't adhere to the Top 40 format, LL Cool J's "I Need Love," Blake sounds murky and utterly uninspired; I don't believe for a second he has any kind of significant personal connection to this material. By the songs that do work you can kind of infer what sort of artist Sexton Blake might be when he's not squandering his resources on ill-conceived publicity stunts, the "Oh L'Amour" here is vulnerable and pretty and the Blake take on the Dream Academy's "Life in a Northern Town" is the rare song on this record that actually rocks a little, even if it's mostly implied.
What Hodges does have is a good voice and an acute grasp of how to make home recording pay off for his style. If these were his songs, I would want to keep listening to the disc based on the initial impression it makes, assessing the lyrics, finding recurring themes, in other words forging a deeper connection between artist and listener. But from Plays the Hits! I don't really know a thing about Sexton Blake except that he had the poor judgement to record a collection of covers as his first widely-released album. I have to say, Sexy, terrible idea. But I won't throw the next one you send me immediately away.
sextonblakemusic.com
Damiera
M(us)ic
Are you like me? Are you deeply bummed by the fact that the Mars Volta took all of one EP to turn into completely unbearable King Crimson wannabe bores and that no amount of studio magic can cover for the fact that Sparta frontman Jim Ward can't sing a lick? Well, you still won't like this Damiera record. But at the very least you can feel angry for its half-hour running time instead of continuing to be disappointed about At the Drive-In's untimely breakup. M(us)ic is plagiarism; there's simply no way of dressing up that reality. Damiera aren't merely influenced by ATDI, they absorb their entire style, aesthetic, and syntax. Some of the songs on here -- most of the songs on here, but especially "Broken Hands" and "Via Invested" -- sound like crappy cover versions of tunes from In/Casino/Out and Relationship of Command, and Damiera vocalist Dave Raymond could one day stand in for Cedric Bixler in a Las Vegas "Great Emo Hits of the 00's" revue. This record rips off At the Drive-In more than "So You Think You Can Dance" rips off "American Idol." I'm not so much filled with righteous anger about Damiera as I am just embarrassed for them. They can play, obviously; you couldn't try to take on this complete a Xerox job without some modicum of chops, but they're totally wasting their efforts on something that any fan of postpunk with a brain will know is a simulacrum. It wasn't at all necessary for the band to go this route; the brief instrumental "Departures" suggests that they have some interest in Don Cab-style modal improvisation that if allowed to develop elsewhere on the record could give be the difference-maker between "in the spirit of" and "flat-out fucking jacking." "I Am Pulse," which is the one song Raymond sings partly in his own voice rather than Bixler's, leaves at least a little hope that these guys have a bit more original spark to them than most of M(us)ic suggests. From AllMusic comes the news that Damiera have recently broken up; it's probably for the best.
www.damiera.com
Dear and the Headlights
Small Steps, Heavy Hooves
First things first: Let's just forgive Dear and the Headlights for their terrible, terrible band name. All the good ones have been taken, and having been in any number of groups with stupid names myself I know it's harder than it seems finding the right moniker. After reading a little bit more about how this Phoenix-area band came to be, however, I feel like the offhandedness of their name suits them. Ian Metzger, P.J. Waxman, and Joel Marquard were longtime friends who liked to hang out and fool around with writing songs. Refreshingly in this era of ruthlessly self-promoting acts who have added 10,000 friends on MySpace before they've written any songs, the trio had to be practically dragged kicking and screaming into the studio by their friend Chuckie Duff, who became their bass player and helped recruit drummer Mark Kulvinskas.
One listen to Small Steps, Heavy Hooves (again with the naming difficulties!) and you can see why Duff was so dead-set on kicking his mates into gear. Metzger is one of the most immediately arresting frontmen of a new band I've heard from in ages, musically and lyrically. His distinctive vocals sometimes resemble Adam Duritz, but on the confusingly named "Hallelujah" (not the Leonard Cohen song) he's channeling Jeff Buckley for sure. That's a comparison I don't throw around lightly. For songs like "Skinned Knees & Gapped Teeth" and "Happy in Love" the band adeptly mixes up electric and acoustic instrumentation, varying tempos enough to prevent the overall gentle feeling from ever coming across as staid or MOR. "I'm Bored, You're Amorous" proves an album highlight thanks to a jagged bass-and-guitar-harmonics coda. They can rock out, too; observe "Sweet Talk." A real find. If these guys can work out their strange problem with giving misleading and drab titles to so many of their songs, which is especially surprising given how stellar a lyricist Metzger is, they're going to sell some records.
dearandtheheadlights.com
MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.