HAIR BAND.

Artist: Ancient Sky

Album: Ancient Sky

Label: The Perpetual Motion Machine

Year: 2009

Ancient Sky seems to have forgotten something when they decided to form a stoner metal band: the metal. But that’s okay. In fact, it’s refreshing. Instead of crushing distortion, as the guitars plow through spacey riffs, the band is accompanied by haunting organ tones and other reverbed keys. But don’t get confused. Ancient Sky isn’t playing psychedelic rock and roll like Dead Meadow or half of Tee Pee’s roster.  The songs are all based on simplistic heavy riffs played with a touch of restraint and plenty of introspection. The album has a few blues dirges, a strung out ballad, and some heavy swung Deep Purple riffs, all laid out in a natural progression. It’s an impressive debut with a bright showcase on some detailed songwriting — take, for instance, the counter melody the bass takes on album opener “Guilt Is Universal.” It’s a pretty solid musical technique you don’t often see from band’s who seem to take more inspiration from bong rips than Beethoven. Or maybe I’m just reading way too far into it.  Either way, Ancient Sky is an album worth listening to.

A little bit creepy.

Artist: Evangelista

Album: Prince of Truth

Label: Constellation

Year: 2009

Evangelista’s Prince of Truth is one of those albums that could very easily be a shelver. Playing like an avant noise jazz group doing their best rough-edged indie rock impersonation laden with dramatic swells and emotional outbursts, Prince isn’t quite the most accessible album of the year.

But for all the feedback driven ambient intros, there are cohesive moments of melody and form. “You Are A Jaguar” has it’s share of freak out improvisational moments, that’s for sure, but the core of the song is a grandiose waltz.

It’s definitely an album worth poring over, allowing multiple listens to penetrate your listening habits and create a foundation for this album to rest on. One unfamiliar with jazz might have a hard time listening to the simplistic bass foundation of “Crack Teeth” and finding melody. But for Evangelista, what the band isn’t playing is almost just as important as what they are.  Their limited arrangements create negative space, and that’s one of the hardest things to do in music.

Music is one of the arts, but it’s hard to categorize most albums the same way as a painting. Most music exists in a concrete form for easy digestion; Prince of Truth is instead a modern abstract painting, open for interpretation and able to generate an emotional response beyond the lyrics themselves. Now it’s just a question of whether or not you can give the album enough time to reveal itself.

Is that handpainted?

Artist: Reigning Sound

Album: Love and Curses

Label: In The Red

Year: 2009

The great thing about modern garage bands is that they have decades of music that early garage inspired to pull from as well. It’s hard to imagine Reigning Sound without Bruce Springsteen’s back catalog or The Dead Boys to look back on, but at the same time, their simple approach revitalizes the best moments of Nuggets and Pebbles.

There’s a lot of passion (and Hammond organ) to these songs, and very few chords. That’s the way it should be. Reigning Sound takes the best from classic chord progressions, and modernizes them just enough with straightforward lyrics about love and loss to give the listener a toe-tapping pop album that stretches past most pre-conceived notions.

Most reviewers know that there are more albums available to review then there is time to review them, hence: The Pile. This column is designed to put a spotlight on some of those albums before they slip through the cracks.