Sound Check: Four local releases show a belief in the album
Buffalo bands keep the pedal to the metal in album production
If we employ the mainstream record business as our model, it would seem a certainty that the album’s days are numbered.
Record labels aren’t really getting behind long-playing, cohesive collections of songs the way they once did, and even some big-name artists are avoiding album releases, ostensibly until this whole mess blows over and things return to “normal” — meaning, people start buying albums again, and record labels begin to fill their coffers with cash once more.
This might not ever happen, of course. What’s been done can’t be undone, one suspects. We’ll see.
In the world of independent music, however, none of this seems to hold water. Few people in that world make any money anyway, and most of them are working without record label budgets, tour support and the like. Matter of fact, a lot of these artists have day jobs. They make music for the right reasons, those being a need to do so and a desire to document their talents while simultaneously making some sort of connection with (potential) listeners.
Here in Buffalo, bands and songwriters continue to make albums, partying like it’s 1994 all over again. I’m both surprised and delighted by the documentations of hard work and (naive?) belief in the music itself that come across my desk. Many of these things are well-conceived, well-produced and well-played. And they really are a lbums, death of the long-player be damned.
Here are a few of my recent favorites.
Who: Here Come the Comets
What: “ Falling Anvils: Love Songs for the Doomed and Secretly Happy”
Where: w ww. myspace. com/herecomethecometss
Why: Richly melodic, multi- layered rock with big hooks.
This record has not left my car’s disc player too often in recent weeks. These guys — songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Todd Lesmeister, guitarist Steve Ryder, bassist Blaine Toney and drummer Jeff Schaller — have created a truly moving song-cycle that ebbs and flows the way a great album should. It’s beautifully produced, too, by the band and Audio Magic’s Mike Rorick, so that the songs are well-served by sonic clarity and gorgeously obfuscated by the Brian Enolike ambient atmospherics.
For fans of Radiohead, Wilco, the Gloria Record, Ed Harcourt.
Who : Greg Klyma
What: “Rust Belt Vagabond”
Where: w ww. klyma.com, www.myspace.com/gregklyma Why: Well-honed, rootsy folk music, smartly structured songs.
Klyma has been traveling the country like a man hellbent on becoming Buffalo’s own Woody Guthrie for more than a decade now. He’s truly an independent artist — Klyma is on the road most of the year, and he goes it alone, slowly but surely building up a following in the cities he frequents. “Rust Belt Vagabond” — apt title, that — is Klyma’s strongest effort yet, a collection of the songwriter’s wry insights and winsome chord structures, with a wonderful take on the traditional “Erie Canal” sealing the deal. Catch him live next Friday night in Broadway Joe’s, 3051 Main St.
For fans of Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk.
Who: The 50 Amp Fuse What: “Rub Her Soul” Where: w ww. myspace. com/thefiftyampfuse
Why: Power-pop of the first order, delivered with a sense of humor and plenty of sugar to dilute the vinegar and you know what.
Buffalo’s own version of the Knack? Could be, and I mean that as a sincere compliment. The 50 Amp Fuse — whose members have taken hilarious assumed names, they being Dickie Champagne, B. J. Coatsworthy, Seamus O’Hanaghin and Fruitcup Van Perry — is the very definition of power-pop, that glorious marriage of treacly melodies and scruffy, distorted guitars that has made everything from the Raspberries to the Kinks such a delight.
For fans of the Knack, ELO, and Jellyfish.
Who: The Missing Planes What: “Leaving the Scene” Where: www.myspace.com/themissingplanes Why: Angular indie rock.
My pick for Buffalo’s finest proponents of classic indie rock — or, as the band members themselves put it on their MySpace page, “remedial math rock.” Thoughtful, strange, unexpected and unafraid.
For fans of Superchunk, the Pixies, Fugazi, Versus and Sonic Youth.•
