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Various
Artists: Tell-All Records Sampler
This sampler is the first release from Tell-All, followed by Liam Singers full length The Empty Heart, and albums by The Kallikak Family and Austins One Umbrella. The music is well put-together, opening new-folk invocation leading into the first side, leading into atmospheric experimentation through more technological, engineered sounds, before arriving at solid, folky pop, and ending with a fifteen-minute piece of tonal architecture full of feedback and desire, courtesy of One Umbrella. The sound of Tell-All is equal parts Trans Am/Spoon emo experimentalism and singer-songwriter pop/new folk, with percussive effects and progressive instrumentation abounding, and the sampler represents them all equally well. Liam Singer provides two of the best tracks: The Last is a short, Saddle Creek-esque introductory confection, while the instrumental Asthma/Rivets in Water is well-produced and complete, of the marketable Damien Rice/Rufus Wainwright NPR school, full of musical saw and piano glissando that arrive at a beautiful, balanced conclusion. The San Francisco sounds of Peter Surlas Vermillion and Dave Zohrobs East Of Here give a hopeful, slow build, a tall dry grass in the city, sundown through chain link, Yo La Tengo kind of feeling, the latter containing a majestic and spare trombone that drives to the proud heart of the composition. Soundtrack-ready St. Rosas Murder of the President, all droning guitars and elegiac, evocative piano, with its keening, sad lyrics, brings about real atmospheric power with its ghostly vocal loops adding the air of a sance. The Kallikak Familys Third Phase and Keith Negleys Fall add layered, contemporary emotion to soften their Warp-esque breakbeats and stutter-stepping vocal effects, providing a good outpost on current West coast technological experimentation. The creepy, witchy sounds of Bostons 28 Degrees Taurus are boring on Red Skies, lacking backstage theory or structure to justify its overblown ambience, but fare much better with Havent I Seen You Before, a lovely, tuneful dream of a song, and one of the best on the album. Austins One Umbrella, represented here by the somewhat bloated Vnsire and the long-form final track, Yesvesd, create atmospheric and affected landscapes that unravel into effective and tacit emotional breakdown. Berkeleys Carrier, with its folk-pop New Years, provides something of the albums single-equivalent. Double-tracked vocals and powerful imagery add a thoughtful edge to simple, inventive melodies and phrasing this song is compulsive and compulsory. Keep an eye out for Carrier and Tell-All in the future.
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