BeatRoute Magazine B.C. print e-edition - September 2016

Angel Olsen, My Woman Wild Americans, Lighten Up James Vincent McMorrow, We Move
something. This new record however is steeped in
muddy irony.
The first half goes over well. Early tracks like
“Intern” and “Shut Up Kiss Me” are goofy and fun,
with a raw looseness that carries on the garage
attitude of the louder moments on Burn Your Fire.
Olsen also turns down some of freak folk shrillness
on these tracks, maintaining the beautiful operatic
weirdness of her timbre, while more convincingly
rocking out with it. The disaffected guitars and
dirty synths are warm and welcoming.
Later tracks carry on similarly ironic titles like
“Heart Shaped Face,” but arrive with moments
of sparse tenderness that land ambivalently. The
closing piano ballad particularly is hard to read.
It’s a beautiful track with distant pianos and
fuzzy condensed vocals, but its aching sentiment
is hard to take seriously on such a lucid record.
Either way, Angel Olsen takes a bold step
on MY WOMAN. Years from now, when she’s
rich and famous, this record will probably be
essential. For the time being, however, it’s tough
to read into.
• Liam Prost
Wild Americans
Lighten Up
Independent
It’s been said that hearing the sound of one hand
clapping will leave you deaf. The premise is that to
hear the proper sound of one hand clapping is to
cup the hand and strike the ear of the listener, creating
an air pocket that ruptures their eardrum.
This would have been preferable to hearing New
Jersey band Wild Americans’ recent EP, Lighten Up.
If the title refers to easing the amount of effort it
takes to write lyrics, then good job all around. Even
the nicest sounding production and studio harmony
can’t hide the Wile E. Coyote-anvil-slingshot effect
of lines like “I know at times I can’t help myself, try
to remember the past,” or…”Whoa, my life is in a hole,
whoa, my life is in a hole.” It’s like swallowing a bottle of
brain cleaner and evacuating clichés.
And please, can we set a cap on using “Whoa” as
the only verbal idea in the chorus? Surely we can think
of more to say, Keanu. There are only so many ways
to dilute the grandeur of expressing emotion musically
with pained versions of the word “oh,” and
for over 80 bars (I stopped counting after 40),
or for the sake of the time I won’t get back,
the last two-and-a-half minutes of the EP, Wild
Americans used three of them. This is the dim,
dull, chips ‘n’ pop party of indie rock.
• Mike Dunn
James Vincent McMorrow
We Move
Dine Alone
Despite two successful albums in his home country
of Ireland, multi-instrumentalist James Vincent Mc-
Morrow’s most popular song is still a cover of Steve
Winwood’s “Higher Love.” It’s admittedly a beautiful
rendition, marked by soft piano and McMorrow’s
beautiful falsetto. Like with any cover though, you
wonder if the artist behind it has any creative spark
of their own. While his debut was made up of what
you might expect from a cover artist, filled to the brim
with acoustic guitar and simplistic piano arrangements,
his second release, 2014’s Post Tropical, showed definite
growth. We Move, McMorrow’s newest release, builds
atop of the lush soundscapes and 808-fueled R&B
croons of his sophomore LP by upping the tempo
a bit and filling the sparseness of the instrumentals
with psych rock inspired guitars and layers of reverb.
McMorrow still manages to keep the intimacy and
heavy-heartedness of his arrangements intact, mostly
thanks to his supernatural upper register. That falsetto
is powerful, able to evoke raw emotion and energy like
few others can, and it’s what allows him to build each
track off We Move to a cathartic conclusion. Lead
single “Rising Water” capitalizes on the psychedelic
influence with a relaxed jam about desperation after
a lost love. Other highlights include “Evil,” featuring
a crazy fun vocal-sample driven breakdown at the
end and “Surreal”, a soaring ballad that shows off
McMorrow’s voice perfectly.
• Cole Parker
32 REVIEWS
September 2016