Arc & Stones - Self-Titled EP

Every generation thinks it has discovered something new and different.  What was blues became rock 'n roll.  What was rock 'n roll became rock.  What was rock became classic rock then became new wave then alternative rock with plenty of little steps in between.  The genre categories have become so sliced and diced that you might as well say each band that has its own sound is a genre sub-category.  Yet, every band's sound is rooted in the past.  There is no Steve Vai without Jimi Hendrix.  There is no Jimi Hendrix without Bo Diddley.  There is no Bo Diddley without Muddy Waters.  There is no Muddy Waters without Robert Johnson. So, when four early twenty year old guys from Brooklyn, New York in a group named Arc & Stones, call themselves an "alternative rock band" with a "new progressive sound," I take the description with a grain of salt.  I mark such hype up to naivete and youthful enthusiasm. 

Sure enough my cynicism was validated as I listened to their first and only release, a five track self-titled extended play.  Arc & Stones does not provide a "new progressive sound," it provides some of the greatest sounding classic hard rock anthems and ballads I've heard since the late 1980's.  This is quite an amazing feat when you consider that not one of the band members was even alive when their sound was at its popularity peak.  For this young "alternative band" it might just prove to be a great place to start a rock music career.

The first track on the EP, "Silence",  is anything but quiet. Singer Dan Pellarin (he is also known to pick up a guitar or pick at the keyboards) has the vocal chops of an early Steven Tyler.  They drip with sweet rock emotion.  He just brings it, not just on "Silence", but on all five cuts on the EP. Lead guitarist Ben Cramer ably negotiates the quiet and loud blues-based pleas while bassist Eddy Bayes and drummer Joe Doino pound out the rhythm.  The remaining four tracks, in order, "Say Goodbye", "Let Me Down", "She's Mine" and "Rise", follow a similar curve with slowly building tensions that burst into raucous anthems and ballads of gargantuan proportions.

Significant credit for Arc & Stones' recorded sound must go to a non-band member, Jeremy Griffith, who produced the recordings.  His guiding midas touch is best displayed on "Let Me Down",  with its vocal hooks that build until a choir envelops the listener.   Don't get the idea that this band is all production.  These guys jointly write song lyrics. The classic hard rock throwbacks thrown down do not sound dated. Despite it not being a new sound, this rock music sound is timeless. 

- Old School

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Whores - S/T EP

Over at the label, Ripple Music, we're about to light the fuse on an incendiary bomb of hardcore stoner punk from the Cody Foster Army, C.F.A.  I don't really know what to call that brash amalgam of conflicting styles, so lazily I call it stoner-core.  Well, if you dig, C.F. A., I just found their ideal touring mates.  Whores plow a slightly more doom-esque end of the stoner-core spectrum (if that spectrum even exists) but there's no doubt what we got here: pissed-off and angry, fantastically bottom heavy, fuzzed and blitzed hardcore.  Riffs are like stoner injected with steroids, ludes and crank.  All at the same time.  Vocals vary between intonality and incoherent rage within seconds.

And it's all freaking fantastic.

"Fake Life" kicks off like it could be any downtempo, sludgy stoner, bass-rich and pummelingly heavy.  But when the vocals kick in, I know I'm in for something different.  You just don't get that kinda anger in stoner.  "You love your fake life" he screams as if his entire soul needs purging.  Meanwhile, the riff rides the ebb and flow of that slowed down doominess, until the adrenaline explosion of the chorus.  "Shower Time" skips the stoner altogether and just leaps right into an angular, agitated scratch of a riff jumping right into hardcore juiciness.   Then to mix it up, the real "stoner" riff this time comes in the chorus.  If you just took that riff and gave it to another band, you'd call it aggressive, but here it's positively blistering.  Meanwhile, they're singing and raging about aphids and ants and I got no fucking idea what he's talking about other than somebody laced his bong with some nasty shit.  But it doesn't matter.  It's brilliant.

I think I'm missing some songs on my promo, so I don't really know the order and all that's supposed to be here, and normally, I wouldn't even bother reviewing a partial promo, but this is some awesome stuff.  "Straight Down" is simply frightening in its rampant roarfest of hardcore and doom-nastiness.   Call it stoner with a pulse.  I don't know, just call it something and check it out.  If you can tolerate some rage in your fuzz, you may dig what these guys are screaming about. 


--Racer

Promising Lips - Self-Titled EP

 



It is like a first date.  You open the cellophane packaging on a CD - it’s an icebreaker.  The equivalent of a pick up line - “Have we met before?”  Your eyes size up the physical attributes of the package - in this case two guys on a stark hillside, casually dressed, hands in pockets.  Still there is something about it - the words ‘Promising Lips,’ in a large and bold-faced all capital type centered across the entirety of the photograph on the cover.

What is it about France?  Is it the romance, the thousands of years of art, Aurelie Claudel (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/swimsuit/collection/models/aurelie_claudel.html)?  The air seems to breed great modern rock bands.  The four tracks on the french band Promising Lips’ self-titled EP blew me away.  The two-piece rock band consists of longtime friends Alikhan Dearlove and bassist Eric V. They supply all of the sound, writing and production.  Each track is kissed with lusciousness.

My mouth dropped open when I heard the first track, The Devil’s Way.  It is a driving, rocking, sensuous calculated production piece of desire.  You get engrossed in a salacious assault on the senses and it doesn’t let up.  The second track, Lovers As Gamblers, picks up where The Devil’s Way leaves off - strident independence with a dab at the corners, screeching guitars, pleading vocals, textures..

The music draws you in.  The third track, Perfect Poison, rubs up against David Byrne/David Bowie territory. It delivers desire and rock hard tension. The final track, Circles, is a punk hard progressive rock hip moving sonic opera.  

It is not enough.  The EP is like a great french kiss at the end of a wonderful first date.  It is hot, anxious and wonderful - lip-smacking good, but leaves you wanting more.  Ah, yes, they are Promising Lips.

- Old School

Video

The Devil’s Way

 

Perfect Poison